The intelligence report on soaring kidney racket in Kolkata has exposed the manner in which outstation patients are taking advantage of the loopholes in the transplantation laws to let a black market to thrive in different private hospitals here.

Intelligence officials said that as per the transplantation laws, a recipient has to announce in a newspaper seeking a donor. Both the donor and the recipient need to go through medical tests then. Once a 'match' is established, the donor has to file an affidavit saying he knows the recipient. It has to be supported by the donor's kin who files another affidavit saying that the family has no objection to the transplantation. The recipient then must secure a clearance from the ethical committee of his home state. The file is then sent to the health department of the recipient's state. Once the clearance comes, it goes to the health department of the donor's state.

However, the officials have pointed out serious discrepancies in clearances from the ethical committee of states like Punjab, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. "We have rushed our men on individual addresses and found those to be false. We have also sent our men to the health departments of these states. In several cases, we found that they never ever had any access to the files even though the files returned to Kolkata duly stamped along with necessary signatures and clearances," said a source.

The thing doesn’t stop here. The medical mafiosi operate kidney rackets with extreme precision." To maintain transparency, the hospitals get video recording of interviews with donors. This regulation came into effect in 2013. But, this too has failed to make the process fool-proof. The mafia targeted the extremely poor people for this. Most of such people swarm around popular temples and mosques across four states, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Assam. They readily agreed to part with their one kidney for anything as low as Rs 25,000-50,000. They were promised Rs 1 lakh each once they arranged for another donor and thus a chain was formed. Since none of them were 'duped' as they had prior knowledge of what they were up to, they never approached police," revealed an official who is probing the case.

Sources revealed that around 40% of the kidney transplantation in Kolkata entails financial transactions. In a majority of these cases, the recepients come from the neighbouring states who seek out donors from West Bengal who are ready to part with their organs for money, according to private hospitals and the health department.

While the state is contemplating harsher laws, the city's medical fraternity felt a restrain on unconnected donors. However, the government believes this is the only way to bust the numerous rackets that have surfaced recently, virtually turning the state into a "kidney bazaar".