Kidney racket: Dera Bassi hospital’s clinical director booked

Gaurav Kanthwal

Mohali, April 25

The police have booked Indus International Hospital, Dera Bassi,clinical directorSurinder Pal Singh Bedi in the alleged kidney sale racket case registered on March 21.

Bedi is the chairperson of the transplant authorisation board, which cleared 33 cases of organ transplant in the private hospital in the last two years.Sources said the anesthesiologist has not reported to work at the hospital for more than a week. Police visited his home recently but the family remained tight-lipped about his whereabouts.

Already, hospital coordinator Abhishek and middleman Raj Narayan have been arrested in the alleged organ trade case.

As many as seven cases of illegal kidney transplantation with donors and recipientsfrom Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Banur, Kurukshetra, Bareilly and Meerut have been found involved in the alleged kidney sale racket by forging documents to show blood relations between the donor and recipient for monetary gains.

The racket involving a hospital coordinator was unearthed after Sirsa resident ‘donor’ complained of the organ trade to the police on March 18.

The Punjab Medical Council (PMC) has taken a note of the incident and said it would initiate appropriate action against doctors, if found guilty of illegal or unethical practice.

Bedi and the hospital management has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Indus Healthcare, owned by Dr Sant Prakash Singh, has three super-speciality hospitals in Punjab, two overseas divisions in Africa (Botswana) and a diagnostic centre, raised from a nursing home.