The alleged leader of a syndicate accused of illegally removing hundreds of kidneys, sometimes from poor laborers held at gunpoint, has been deported from Nepal to India.
Nepalese authorities handed over Amit Kumar to Indian officials on Saturday, said Upendra Aryal, a top police officer in Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu. Indian officials had been seeking his extradition since he was arrested on Thursday at a jungle resort in Nepal.
Authorities had been searching for Kumar since last month when he fled after police officers said they broke up the kidney transplant racket they claimed he ran from an upscale New Delhi suburb.
Police were also investigating whether Kumar was involved in illegal kidney transplants in Nepal, Aryal said.
Kumar has denied any wrongdoing. Indian authorities declined to give comments on the case on Saturday.
Police in India have said that Kumar headed an illegal organ transplant ring based in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon.
Authorities believe his group sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world in the past nine years.
Police said they raided the operation's main clinic in Gurgaon last month and broke up the ring, which officials claim was spread over at least five Indian states and involved at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics, as well as a car that had been outfitted as a laboratory.
Subsequent raids allegedly uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names.
Survivors described horrific scenes of being brought to Gurgaon with promises of construction jobs, then being forcibly sedated.
"We have taken your kidney," day laborer Mohammed Salim said he was told by a masked man when he awoke from surgery in agonizing pain. "If you tell anyone, we'll shoot you."
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