A few months ago, a passenger hurrying to board an international flight to Iran was stopped by officials at the Mumbai airport, on a tip-off. This wasn’t the first time. Previously, he had been turned back at a major south Indian airport on suspicion that his trip to Cambodia was connected to an organ trade racket.
What happened at the Mumbai airport, though, had consequences for another man. Before letting go of the suspect in Mumbai, authorities chanced upon suspicious-looking text messages, including medical reports, on his phone.
On May 18, Sabith Nasar, 30, of Valappadu in Thrissur district, the man allegedly behind those messages, was on his way back from Iran. Already on their watch list, immigration officials detained him at the Cochin international airport immigration counter. Assistant Immigration Officer Ramesh Kumar alerted the Nedumbassery police in Kochi.
A team led by Station House Officer of Nedumbassery T.C. Murugan took him into custody. A gruelling interrogation by officers at various levels ensued. The interrogation then shifted to the Ernakulam rural district police headquarters in Aluva, where District Police Chief (Ernakulam Rural) Vaibhav Saxena took over, exposing an alleged organ trade racket whose real magnitude, the police claim, defied belief.
Police pressure
Initially stubborn, Nasar’s defence started to crack as the grilling entered its fifth hour, say police. Eventually, he confessed to having played the role of an agent for a Hyderabad-based racket trafficking people to Iran as organ donors. It emerged that, initially, Nasar had flown to Sri Lanka as a potential donor, but was turned down as his kidney didn’t match the recipient’s.
“As he declined to return to India, the racket that hired him as a donor offered him another role. He could work as a middleman in the illegal organ trade for a lucrative commission. He agreed and was put in touch with Madhu, originally from Palarivattom in Kochi city, who later emerged as the mastermind behind the racket trafficking organ donors to Iran. Since then, Nasar had frequently flown to Iran, where he stayed with Madhu,” say investigation sources.
As Nasar buckled under intense interrogation, he revealed names, one of which — Prathapan’s — caught the attention of the investigation team. What triggered it was the suspiciously frequent and high number of online money transfers, often running into lakhs of rupees, from Nasar to a private bank account in Hyderabad attached to that name.
“At that point, we just had a name. Nasar himself knew little about the man who he had never contacted. Later, we found that Prathapan only maintained contact with Madhu. But we were convinced that he was crucial to the whole case,” says Saxena.
The Nedumbassery police registered a case invoking Indian Penal Code Section 370 (trafficking of persons) and relevant sections of the Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 covering a period between January 1, 2019 and May 17, 2024. The Angamaly Judicial First Class Magistrate remanded Nasar in judicial custody on May 20.
The police’s remand report painted the picture of a man who misled vulnerable people into paid organ donation by convincing them that it was permissible. He handled logistics such as travel for donors flown from India to Iran, post-surgery accommodation in an apartment for up to 20 days, and their return flight to India, according to the remand report.
Case developments
On a directive of Ernakulam Range DIG Putta Vimaladitya, Saxena formed a 10-member special investigation team (SIT) led by Aluva Deputy SP A. Prasad to probe the case. The police withheld Prathapan’s name in the FIR and from the media to prevent him taking flight. He still did, even as a dedicated team kept digging for information about his identity and whereabouts.
Another team was despatched to Thirunellai village in Palakkad district to track down Shameer, who, according to Nasar, was the sole Kerala resident among the 20 donors flown to Iran during the four-and-a-half-year period. Shameer was allegedly paid ₹6 lakh for donating a kidney, Nasar had claimed, as per the police. But the police team could not find Shameer, who, locals said, had moved reportedly to Tamil Nadu, at least a year ago.
In the meantime, the SIT made a second arrest on May 24. Sajith Shyam of Edathala, near Aluva town, was picked up after the SIT established an online money trail between him and Nasar. Shyam was allegedly a trusted man of Madhu’s and a safekeeper of the profit Madhu made through the organ trade. The two had even set up a fictitious medical tourism company as a cover for their allegedly illegal business. Madhu maintained two separate channels of online transactions with Nasar and Shyam, say the police. Nasar was transferred the money to be paid to Prathapan as commission, which varied according to the time he invested in luring potential donors. The rest of the profit was largely parked in Shyam’s account.
According to sources, two accounts that Madhu maintained in his personal name and in the name of his company had ₹13 crore, while Nasar‘s account had ₹1.97 crore, and Shyam’s account ₹40 lakh. With the investigation still under way, more accounts may emerge, they say.
The SIT found out that the racket charged the recipients anywhere between ₹50 lakh and ₹60 lakh, and in some cases even up to ₹80 lakh, for an organ. The donors were never paid more than ₹6 lakh. Most of the donors were from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, while the recipients were primarily from Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Jammu and Kashmir. All transplants were allegedly done in Iran and coordinated by Madhu.
“Initial check-ups, such as kidney function tests and blood group tests, were suspected to be made in hospitals and laboratories within the country. Even after accounting for ₹6 lakh paid to donors and up to ₹20 lakh towards flight tickets, cost of surgery, three days of post-surgery care, and 20 days of accommodation in an apartment, it still left the racket with a substantial profit on each donation,” says Saxena.
Tracking down a chain
Meanwhile, the SIT kept trying to track down Prathapan. They rummaged through hundreds of call detail records of phone calls before zeroing in on one mobile number. While it remained mostly switched off, it crackled to life occasionally.
The team, under Inspector Mr. Murugan, Sub-Inspector S.S. Sreelal, and ASI Ronnie Augustine and Sreelal, locked onto the tower location when the phone was switched on in Hyderabad. But it was still a vast area with no exact coordinates of his hideout. The team had to plan meticulously, which they did, aided by local intelligence inputs. They patiently eliminated potential targets and finally landed outside a nondescript hotel in Hyderabad where he was found holed up. For a man who left a bunch of professional cops chasing shadows, he gave in quite meekly, say the police. Ballamkonda Ramprasad, who went by the name Prathapan, is a 41-year-old from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
Prathapan had also started off as a potential donor for a Delhi-based organ trade racket but was rejected due to diabetes. He turned into a middleman after linking up with another middleman who worked for Madhu in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh. Soon, he rivalled the Kadapa agent as he cast his net far and wide both online and offline, maintaining the public persona of a real estate agent to stave off suspicion, say the police. He allegedly prowled the Internet and social media platforms, sneaking into groups related to organ transplantation to find potential targets. He also toured the hinterlands of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, luring the poor as donors.
“Prathapan was the go-to man for many organ trade rackets. He had the uncanny ability to find the perfect match, which is quite rare in organ donation. He supplied many of the donors in the case [registered in Ernakulam Rural], and none of them were rejected by the hospitals in Iran. He claims to have been in the trade since the pandemic, but considering his seasoned operations, we suspect he had been in the trade longer,” says Saxena.
Soon after, the police traced Shameer to Bengaluru. He was also enticed by Prathapan on social media. He confessed that he went into hiding, scared of the consequences of becoming a donor for the racket that was on the police radar. An ultrasound scan proved that one of his kidneys was indeed missing, matching his confession that he had donated it in Iran in May. After finding himself neck-deep in debt due to his online game addiction, he thought donating an organ for a fee was his ticket to a debt-free life. But that was not to be, as the racket short-changed him. The SIT has since added charges of cheating and conspiracy against the accused for not paying Shameer the promised amount. The SIT has now trained its focus on Madhu, who is in Iran.
After dabbling in digital marketing for a while, Madhu is suspected to have turned to organ trade at least a decade ago. He rarely visited India during that period, except for a week in Delhi recently. He was the one to place the order for donors with Prathapan. “An Indian can be held responsible for an act committed abroad if it is a punishable offence in India, even if it is not in the foreign country concerned. In this case, the human trafficking charge will also stick, especially IPC Section 370 that references the forcible removal of organs. Besides, the victims are also Indians. So, there is solid ground for the extradition of the accused,” says lawyer John S. Ralph, who recently dealt with a similar case.
Getting hold of Madhu, the police say, will reveal more about the racket, which is believed to have operated in ways that make the saying “truth is stranger than fiction” ring true. The police have initiated steps to get the Interpol to issue a ‘Blue Corner’ notice, issued to facilitate information on a missing person across country borders, against Madhu.