National

Kidney racket kingpin had links with Bollywood too

GURGAON/NEW DELHI/MORADABAD: Investigations into the multicrore kidney racket have revealed that the alleged kingpin Amit Kumar pumped money into several hospitals outside India and even acted and produced a number of ‘B’ and ‘C’ category Bollywood movies.

“Physician Upender told us during interrogation that Amit Kumar had pumped money into as many as 150 hospitals in Europe and Gulf countries. Upender does not have detailed information about Amit’s international connections and does not know the names of these hospitals. The interrogation has revealed that Amit had a large number of foreign clients visiting him for transplant, most of them from Greece, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia,” Senior Superintendent of Police (Moradabad) Prem Prakash told The Hindu on the phone.

Amit “Is learnt to have acted in “Kanoon Ki Janjeer”, “Khooni Raat” and “Aag”. He has also produced some movies.”

The police officer said that most of the teams, which had fanned out to Noida, Ghaziabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir, had returned. The last person arrested by the Moradabad police is a doctor, K.K. Aggarwal. He was arrested at Alwar in Rajasthan on Friday.

Sources said Upender had told the police about Amit’s close association with some politicians and bureaucrats too. But their names have been withheld as this information is being verified.

Meanwhile, four persons, including nurse Linda, who had been earlier arrested for their alleged connection with the kidney transplant racket were sent to 14-day judicial custody by a local court in Gurgaon.

In a related development, another nurse Ribika was detained by the Haryana police on Saturday. She had worked at Upender’s hospital in Ballabgarh for over two months and witnessed transplant operations being conducted by Amit, sources said.

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