A doctor wanted in connection with hundreds of illegal kidney transplants in India has been arrested by police in New Delhi.
Jeevan Rawat, 36, who was the subject of an INTERPOL Red Notice issued at the request of Indian authorities was taken into custody on Sunday 17 February. Earlier this month, police in Nepal arrested 40-year-old Amit Kumar, who was also the subject of a Red Notice for his alleged involvement in the transplants.
The Red Notices for the two men were issued on 31 January at the request of Indian authorities after police discovered an illegal hospital at a house in Gurgaon near Delhi. The two men were both subjects of national arrest warrants for illegal transplanting of kidneys, cheating and criminal conspiracy.
During the past eight years, the men were have alleged to have forcibly operated on around 500 people, removing their kidneys and transplanting them to foreign patients in a secret operating theatre.
Many INTERPOL member countries view a Red Notice as the basis for the provisional arrest of a wanted person with a view to their extradition. It can be requested by any of INTERPOL’s 186 member countries, and is issued by INTERPOL’s General Secretariat in Lyon, France.
There are currently nearly 14,000 INTERPOL Red Notices, or international wanted persons notices in circulation. In 2007, police around the world arrested nearly 600 individuals who were the subject of a Red Notice.