People living around ‘kidney houses’ didn’t notice anything amiss either

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People living around ‘kidney houses’ didn’t notice anything amiss either

Sanjeev K Ahuja , Hindustan Times
Gurgaon, January 28, 2008

Last Updated: 00:31 IST(28/1/2008)

It wasn’t just the police and local administration whose apathy Dr Amit Kumar and his accomplices took advantage of. The people living around the two Gurgaon houses where illegal kidney transplants were being done for nine years did not react at all.

The gang had been operating from two three-storeyed residential buildings in DLF City Phase-I (D5/29) and another in Sector 23 (4374). The first house had been turned into a guesthouse and second was a full-fledged hospital. However, the name-plate outside the house bore the name of a lawyer. Foreign clients were made to stay in DLF house and would be shifted to Sector 23 for a transplant.

Most people living close to these two houses said they had no inkling that something wrong was happening inside. Those who did suspect some shady activity did not gather the courage to report the matter to police because of the fear of being targeted.

“A couple of times I saw blood in the drain that was connected to the sewerage line on the left side of the house. I even told attendants of the D5/29 in DLF City. But they confidently refuted my suspicion, saying clothes were being washed in the bathroom and fabric was bleeding,” Shaji John, a regular visitor to G5/31 in the same lane, said.

John told Hindustan Times that it was only recently that a neighbour had a tiff with the attendants for throwing things that looked like hospital waste in the open vacant plot adjacent to this house. “They would throw blood soaked bandages and even flesh. It would reek like anything. Everything about this house was suspicious. Even the attendants, guards and servants looked rich,” he said.

“These attendants would also act as drivers in the evenings and would use luxury cars for ferrying guests. The cars would not move during the day. The attendants had spread word that it was a guesthouse of a multinational,” John said.

A guard also said that he was told by the attendants that it was a guesthouse.

This correspondent saw 12 hospital beds, an operation theatre, a diagnostic laboratory and other medical paraphernalia in the basement of D5/29. Three floors had about three spacious rooms where foreign guests would recuperate.

Gurgaon police commissioner Mohinder Lal has blamed social intelligence and said that none of the residents of the area had ever approached the police and informed about suspicious activities were being carried out there.

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