AN ABOMINABLE TRADE

By BY JEFFERSON PENBERTHY/NEW DELHI.

Like thousands of poor Tamil villagers, Kumaresan Velu, 29, had been lured to Bangalore, India's booming computer capital, where construction jobs pay $3 a day. To tide him over until he could find work, he agreed to sell his blood. Velu was taken to Yellamma Dasappa, a private hospital, and sedated after admission. When he was discharged eight days later, he had a 25-cm scar on his side. He later learned that his left kidney was missing. Within days, nine other victims told police a similar tale.

Reports of an underground trade in human organs have circulated in India for years, but claims of outright theft from living people had not been lodged before. When Velu's story hit the newspapers, the authorities acted. In New Delhi a long-pending national statute outlawing the sale of human organs from live donors was finally put into effect. In Bangalore police arrested Dr. K.S. Siddaraj, head of nephrology at the government-run Victoria Hospital. He was accused of having referred his poorer patients to private hospitals in the city as potential kidney donors and of receiving a 15% commission on every resulting transplant. Also arrested were a general practitioner, Dr. Syed Audil Ahmed, and two alleged middlemen. They were charged with having induced or deceived an estimated 1,000 poor villagers into donating kidneys to recipients from India, Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, who paid as much as $10,000 for a transplant.

Voluntary donors received between $500 and $1,000. Velu, who had not volunteered, said Ahmed offered him $165 in an attempt to buy his silence. Said Velu: ``I am poor and ignorant, but I am determined to see that others are not duped like this.''

The accused face charges of theft, fraud and conspiracy; if convicted, they could be jailed for as long as 10 years. Siddaraj, who denied any involvement in the transplants, was released on $6,600 bail. The other suspects, still in custody, claim their actions were legal, as the villagers had agreed to sell their kidneys. In a Bangalore police station last week, Ahmed described his role as one of finding recipients in Saudi Arabia. He told Time, ``I thought that I was doing a service to kidney patients and that the government was earning foreign exchange. I was thinking of asking for an income tax rebate.''

Over the past 15 years, India has become the world's largest reservoir of live kidney donors. In the 1980s the trade was centered in Bombay, but after a crackdown it spread to other areas, specifically the Madras suburb of Villivakkam, popularly known as ``Kidneyvakkam.'' Several thousand people living in abject poverty in Villivakkam have sold their kidneys. In a typical instance, Rani Saravanan said she had decided to have a kidney removed to obtain cash to feed her family and pay debts.

As a result of the operations, says the Rev. Gerard Nelliyotukonam of the Don Bosco Social Service Society, hundreds of Villivakkam residents suffer abdominal pains, weakness and generally poor health. Says he: ``It is terrible that these people have to struggle to live by selling their body parts. Most waste the money on drink and shoddy goods and are soon teetering back on the verge of destitution anyway.''

Whether the new federal law will put an end to the traffic in human organs is uncertain. Bombay urologist Berjor Colobawalla, who has campaigned against the practice, notes that ``the federal government has reacted to public pressure, but unless local authorities are serious about enforcing this law, the trade will go on clandestinely.'' Bangalore police say two investigators will go to Saudi Arabia to gather evidence, specifically by interviewing organ recipients. By Jefferson Penberthy/New Delhi. Reported by Anita Pratap/Bangalore

With reporting by ANITA PRATAP/BANGALORE