Indian Kidney Scam Kingpin Corralled

From a pop culture angle there's something very Austin Powers about Dr. Horror & The Kidneys of Gold. Nor is the vibe helped by the fact kidney scam kingpin Amit Kumar looks somewhat like Peter Sellers and is a bold faced spinner of the truth right up there with Dr.Evil and Dick Cheney Wanted in India and Canada for his organ harvesting activities, all that was missing was Mini-Me as Doctor Horror schooled the assembled Indian media on his enormous contributions to society. As reported in The Hindustan Times, Kumar reiterated it was absolutely wrong" for authorities to accuse him of leading an organ-transplant ring that illegally removed hundreds of kidneys, sometimes from unwilling donors. "I have been running the hospital for 15 years," Kumar told police. "Doing kidney transplants is my main business." he said. Patients from US, Canada and European countries came to his hospital where he had conducted over 3,000 transplants, the statement said. "In India, there are legal complications," he said. "Different states have different organ transplant laws. In Haryana, the law is slightly relaxed, which is why I opened my hospital in Gurgaon." The location is significant, an upscale suburb of New Delhi which appears to have its own laws. The cheeky devil continued in full dervish mode to point out he was providing a ,living for poor folk more than willing to part with their kidneys for a hill of beans. Making him no more guilty than Frank Stronach is of trafficking in auto parts. The allegations of victims forced onto the operating table at gunpoint and others tricked with promises of work were waived off as the products of an over-imaginative police force, a desperate accusation rarely levelled at any police force anywhere Survivors described horrific scenes of being brought to Gurgaon with promises of construction jobs, then being forcibly sedated. "We have taken your kidney," impoverished day labourer Mohammed Salim said he was told by a masked man after waking from surgery in agonizing pain. "If you tell anyone, we'll shoot you." Kumar countered with a portrait of himself as a contributor of financial aid for India's poor, a necessary conduit between Westerners with cash in hand and Indians with a kidney to go. The arrest ended an international manhunt for the fugitive whose wife and two sons live in the Toronto suburb of Brampton, in a palatial pad which cost Kumar $610,000 last April. Survivors described horrific scenes of being brought to Gurgaon with promises of construction jobs, then being forcibly sedated. Authorities allege that up to 500 kidneys were sold to clients who travelled to India from around the world over the last nine years. Nepalese police were investigating whether Kumar was involved in illegal kidney transplants in Nepal, as stories of a kidney grow-op village somewhere in Nepal surfaced. A preliminary investigation suggested Kumar was a frequent visitor to that country and had been looking for land where he could build a hospital, said Nepalese authorities. Kumar has been accused in past organ-transplant schemes elsewhere in India. Authorities alleg his organization spanned five Indian states and involved at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses, paramedics, a car outfitted as a laboratory and a swarm of assorted drivers, guides and thugs. In one raid on a Kumar facility, police uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with the names of 48 foreigners. So how is a Dr.Horror able to get away with body-snatching in the 21st century? How he was he able to operate for 15 years and only now be investigated for illegal transference of kidney ownership? The answers may lie in the list that has all New Delhi talking. The buzz in the bazaars is it lists Kumar's clients among India's rich and powerful, a list the authorities, for a variety of reasons, are most anxious to get a hold of. The Indian powerful and privileged, not so much.