Kidney Sales Brokerage Is Flourishing in India

Abdul Hai, a stocky 34-year-old now in police detention, sells human kidneys for a living.

He wasn’t jailed for dealing in kidneys; the sale of body organs is legal in India. Hai was arrested when a kidney donor complained of being mugged after refusing to pay Hai a commission.

Hai says he is one of about 100 middlemen who procure kidneys for the ailing rich from Bombay’s willing poor.

Hai, who worked as a doctor’s chauffeur before becoming a kidney broker, said he has arranged the sale of 20 kidneys since a surgeon suggested the business to him a year ago.

“People queue up, ready to give away a kidney. You can find such donors everywhere,” he said in a cellblock interview.

Hai was arrested May 12 after Dhanraj Agarwal, a street vendor, told police that two people attacked him and stole almost $2,000 he had been paid for a kidney. Agarwal said the attack came minutes after he refused to give Hai a commission, according to Police Inspector Appa Sahib Shinde.

“We have detained him only on suspicion of robbery, and it doesn’t matter to me if he sells

kidneys for a living or not,” Shinde said. Hai has denied involvement in the robbery.

Hai told a reporter that he charged roughly $95 to $190 for matching donors and patients. India requires a kidney donor to officially affirm his desire to voluntarily give up a kidney, but before that moment the donor could already have collected $1,875 to $3,125 from the recipient, Hai said.

Doctors Divided

The flourishing kidney trade has sharply divided Indian doctors along ethical lines.

“The world knows that Bombay is a center for buying kidneys. I think it is a shame for us to be so notoriously known,” said Kisan Mehta, head of the Life Foundation, a private group that advocates kidney transplants from cadavers. Indian laws prohibit transplants from the dead.

“But what is ethics to a man who is dying?” asked Dr. Keshava Chandra Reddy, a kidney transplant specialist in Madras. The urologist said he and other surgeons from the Pandalai Cardiothoracic Foundation have transplanted 485 kidneys in four years.

Renal transplants became common in India about seven years ago when the anti-rejection drug cyclosporine became available locally. There are no official figures on the number of transplants performed in India. But since cyclosporine’s introduction, at least $7.8 million has changed hands in connection with the estimated 4,000 kidney transplants performed in Bombay, according to Dr. B. N. Colabawalla, chief of the National Kidney Foundation.