Doctors of Mumbai's Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital were arrested for involvement in kidney selling racket
The CEO of Mumbai's Hiranandani Hospital along with four other doctors was sent to 14 day judicial custody in connection with the illegal kidney selling racket on Saturday.
Hospital CEO Sujit Chatterjee, medical director Anurag Naik, Mukesh Shetye, Mukesh Shaha and Prakash Shetye, who were arrested on Wednesday, were sent to judicial custody till August 26 by Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Bandra.
The licences of all the five doctors have already been suspended.
This comes just a day after the anticipatory bail pleas of two other doctors were rejected by the court.
The accused have filed bail applications in the court, which are likely to be heard on Tuesday next week.
The illegal transplant racket came to light after intensive police investigation last month.
According to Suresh Gupta, the whistleblower in the case, fake documents were being submitted to the hospital for the operations.
In many cases, donors and recipients were not related but the operations were performed based on fake documents.
On July 14, the Mumbai Police stopped a transplant moments before it began. After verification, the identity of the donor, Shobha Thakur, who was listed as the recipient's wife was found to be fake.
The inquiry led to arrests of nine people including that of Bhijendra Bisen, the alleged mastermind of the operation.
A three-member committee formed by the state health department found out the involvement of the CEO and a few doctors in the case.
The report stated that the doctors had been negligent on multiple counts and they should not have gone ahead with the surgery till they had satisfactory information that the donor and recipient were related.
Police are now investigating whether the racket was centered in Mumbai only or was spread out in Maharashtra.