'Double standards': EPS tears into state government over stalled kidney-racket probe

A month after the Madras High Court's Madurai Bench denounced Tamil Nadu's kidney trafficking racket as a heinous crime and ordered a Special Investigation Team under senior IPS officer Prem Anand Sinha, the probe has not started, the Leader of Opposition said on Monday. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami accused the state government of 'blatant double standards' in its approach to the two biggest law-and-order scandals in the state: lightning speed for one, studied silence for the other. Palaniswami contrasted the government's response to the September 27 Karur rally stampede, which killed 41 people, with its inaction on the organ trade. In the stampede case, he said, a police team led by an Inspector General was formed within hours, even before the government received a copy of the court order. In the kidney case, he alleged, 'even after a month, the government has not commenced the probe' ordered by the court. The racket, first exposed in Namakkal district, targeted some of the state's most vulnerable people: poor power-loom workers of Kumarapalayam and adjoining areas. Brokers, according to a preliminary inquiry by the Health Systems Project, promised amounts between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh and paid the donors far less. One woman, a mother of two, told investigators she was paid Rs 6.5 lakh for a kidney, sold to clear mounting family debts. The state's own officials have confirmed the trafficking. In a preliminary report by project director S. Vineeth, the health department found irregularities, unrelated donors, forged documents, at two private hospitals: Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan Medical College and Hospital in Perambalur and Cethar Hospital in Tiruchi. Both had their transplant licences suspended on July 23. Palaniswami pointed a political finger at one of the hospitals, alleging it is owned by a DMK MLA in Tiruchirappalli's Mannachanallur, and said the government's reluctance to act was politically motivated. He said the court's displeasure at the state's 'casual approach' had been recorded in open court. Health Minister Ma Subramanian has denied the charge of inaction, saying investigations are ongoing and transplant norms will be tightened. The minister said two agents had been arrested and hospital licences scrutinised, with an SIT formed under the court's direction. The court's directions were specific: the SIT, headed by the Inspector General of Police (South Zone) with four senior officers, was to file its first progress report by September 24. Palaniswami's charge is that the calendar has moved while the victims' justice has not. The government now faces a simple question from the opposition: if a probe can begin before the court order arrives in one case, why has another not begun a month after it?