'When I woke up, my kidney was gone'

Gurgaon: The bait was a job offer, wages Rs 150 per day plus a verbal "agreement" - first get a physical fitness check done at a Gurgaon hospital.

For many like construction worker Sakil, it all sounded like a good employer. Soon they were to realise the cost: their kidneys.

In the last 10 years, the multi-crore kidney scam involving absconding "Dr Horror" Amit alias Santosh Raut has led to at least 500 illegal transplants.

Sakil, Salim and Nasim are mostly poor, semi-skilled labourers. Lying in Civil Hospital, Gurgaon, they share a real-life horror story.

When Sakil was taken to a house-cum-hospital No. 4374, Sector 23, Gurgaon on the night of January 23, he found at least three persons lying on the bed, refusing to talk, something he too was told to follow by two masked men "looking after the patients".

The next morning Sakil woke up with pain in the stomach. He was told by "doctors" that his kidney has been removed.

Two days later as Sakil rested on the bed speechless, an Uttar Pradesh police team trooped in looking for suspects in the massive kidney racket.

The police found that along with Sakil, Salim and Nasim too had lost their kidneys to "Dr Horror" Amit and his cronies.

The police rescued two youths, Ajay Kumar and Sanjay Kumar, both residents of Meerut, waiting for the "check-up".

Sakil says he can't forget the two men who had met him on January 16, the day when it all began.

Sakil says he was waiting for an odd job near Old Delhi Railway Station in the afternoon when a middle-aged Muslim with beard and a youth offered him a job of a whitewasher. He was promised Rs 150 per day for a period of two-and-a-half months.

Hardly literate, he agreed.

"I was introduced to a contractor at India Gate who drove an Esteem car. He said he would provide me a job," Sakil (28) said.

"The two persons then disappeared leaving me with the contractor in the car late in the evening that day", recalls Sakil.

As the car moved fast, he was asked whether he had some disease.

"When I told him I had none, he insisted on a check-up and in the car itself took my blood sample and told me that I was OK", Sakil says.

For the next couple of days Sakil was kept in a house, "most probably near Ballabhgarh, Faridabad along with four others".

On the night of January 21, the Esteem car driver took him in his car.

"After about two hours, we reached near a petrol pump where I was told to get into a black Santro car. In minutes we reached a house and the car driver knocked at the gate in a particular style," recalls Sakil.

When he entered the house it was around 0230 hrs IST. The Santro driver had vanished.

On the night of January 22, two gunmen came and took him to a separate room where a lot of medical equipment was lying.

Sakil said, "I was made to lie on a stretcher, despite my objection, but they told me not to worry as this was part of a medical check-up. Two persons who had covered their faces with green cloth gave me an injunction and I lost my consciousness."

"When I regained consciousness, after around three hours, I felt pain near the stomach and enquired about it. The gunmen told me that my kidney has been removed and that I would be paid as promised," Sakil said.

Salim, 35, also has the same story - the same bearded Muslim man, the same Esteem and Santro cars and the same Gurgaon "hospital".

A resident of Sahapeer Gate, Sahakasa Bazaar, Meerut, Salim works as a labourer. He is married and has five children.

Sakil's father Abdulla Fakir, who works as a tailor, says with tears in his eyes that his son has lost his kidney without a penny being paid to him.

"The government should provide us some monetary compensation and a job," says Fakir.

Sakil' mother angrily demands punishment to all guilty persons.