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KATHMANDU, NEPAL - India said Friday it would ask Nepal to extradite an Indian doctor alleged to be behind a multi-million-dollar international illegal kidney transplant racket.
Amit Kumar, the subject of an Interpol alert, was detained late Thursday at a hotel in southern Nepal.
Nepali police said the 40-year-old fugitive was in possession of over 200,000 dollars in Indian and foreign currency, according to press reports. His brother Jeevan Rawat, 36, is still being hunted by police.
India's embassy in Kathmandu said it would "put in a formal request to the concerned authorities in Nepal to hand him over to Indian authorities."
Indian police believe that over the past eight years, Kumar was behind the illegal transplanting of 500 kidneys to wealthy Indian or foreign patients.
The kidneys are believed to have come from impoverished migrant workers, some of whom have said they were kidnapped and drugged.
The multi-million-dollar scam emerged last month when Indian police raided several hospitals and houses in Gurgaon, a wealthy New Delhi suburb.
A doctor, several intermediaries and hospital staff have been arrested in India over the past week.
Under Indian law, kidney transplants are allowed only if the organ is donated by a blood relative or spouse, or there is a swap agreement between two needy families. All transplants must also be cleared by the government.
But a huge gap between demand and supply of kidneys because of few body donations has resulted in a flourishing illegal trade.
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