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Everyone living or working near DLF D 5/29, where kidney racket kingpin Dr Amit Kumar used to keep his patients, has something to say. Everyone, in hindsight, seems to have noticed something unusual about the house.
Shown a photo of Dr Amit Kumar, one of the hangers-on at the house says: “He used to come to this house at least two or three times a week. He owned a red Mercedes with the number 0019.” He says he noticed that people usually came there and left after a few days — the only ones who stayed back were the Nepali domestic helps.
Neighbours say there were two cars always on stand-by at the house — a Honda City and a Mercedes, both used for fetching people and rations.
Satbir, a driver working in the neighbourhood, noticed something unusual about the drain in the house: “It used to be gushing loudly at all times, and even though it was covered, we could hear a lot of water rushing.”
In January 2007, Satbir and other drivers say, when the Nithari case broke, they had become suspicious and opened the drain. “We saw red liquid that looked like blood and we called one of the friendlier domestic helps to check but he gave us a convincing explanation that one of the guests had broken a big bottle of red wine. He even showed us a broken bottle,” said one of the drivers working in the locality.
The drivers and local helps seem to have kept their distance from the house. “It’s because the people who came there were so strange, even the drivers looked so wealthy, it was unnatural... they wore gold rings and chain and were constantly trying to lure us to join them,” said Satbir.
On the official side, the police seem to have made little progress in the case. “We are scanning the documents and the evidence collected during the raids in Ballabhgarh and Gurgaon in the last two days, in order to trace the movement and actions of the accused,” said Rakesh Arya, the Deputy Commissioner (West), who is also in charge of the Gurgaon chapter of the kidney racket investigations.
Commissioner of Police Mohinder Lal said it was possible that the main accused, Amit Kumar, may have fled the country. The commissioner had assured mediapersons on Friday that there was no possibility of Amit Kumar leaving the country but on Sunday he said: “We are not ruling out the possibility that he may have escaped abroad by using his contacts. However, he will not be able to escape the legal channels.”
The police chief said his officers are co-ordinating with various agencies, but there was little sign of progress. Said Arya: “We are working on the case and it is too early to give definite answers.”
The Faridabad police, meanwhile, traced Dr Amit’s driver Harpal Singh from a village in Palwal and handed him over to the Gurgaon police. He is being interrogated.
Son of ‘freedom fighter’, ‘Dr Amit’ took keen interest in surgeries, recalls teacher
NAGPUR: It couldn’t have been more ironical that Santosh Raut alias Dr Amit, the prime accused in the kidney transplant racket unearthed in Gurgaon last week, is son of a “freedom fighter who lived life with great austerity”. “Rameshwar Motisa Raut (Santosh’s father) used to wear Khadi and was a staunch nationalist. He would walk barefoot most of the time,” recalls Harishankar Mahashabde, former principal of Radhakisan Toshniwal Ayurvedic Mahavidyalaya where Santosh studied.
Nobody in his native Patur-Nandapur village in Murtizapur tehsil of Akola knows his whereabouts now. The villagers have not seen much of the family — Rameshwar, his wife and their four sons, including Santosh — after 1993, when Santosh was caught in a kidney racket in Mumbai.
“He (Rameshwar) was disturbed when Santosh was caught in a kidney racket. He often came to me during those days,” says Mahashabde. The villagers still speak highly of Rameshwar who was the up-sarpanch of Patur-Nandapur. He used to run a kirana shop there. While the shop is no longer there, his nameplate still hangs in front of his house. “The Rauts have some distant cousins in the village. They come here once in a while,” says police ‘patil’ (informer) Gopal Lakhe. “They own about 10 acres of land which they have given on rent,” he adds.
While Rameshwar still enjoys respect in the village, nobody wants to talk about his son. Santosh had left for Mumbai immediately after completing his Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) in 1980. Earlier, they knew of Santosh as a village boy “who has made it big in Mumbai”. They fail to understand what prompted him to engineer a murky kidney racket. Mahashabde, who had taught Santosh, recalls that though there was nothing impressive about Raut’s academic performance, he took keen interest in surgeries and was a skilled hand. Upon Santosh’s insistence, Mahashabde had visited his Mahim hospital in Mumbai many years ago. “I had sympathy for him since he came from a small village,” he says.
According to Mahashabde, many foreigners used to visit Raut’s clinic. “I was shocked when I got to know that he was involved in a kidney racket.”
—VIVEK DESHPANDE
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