Old news of Kidney theft by a doctor is being shared now linking it falsely to COVID-19. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 5, 2020
A post claiming that a doctor from Garg hospital in UP was caught selling the kidney of a corona patient is doing rounds on social media. Through this article lets fact-check the claim made in the post.
UP doctor caught selling the kidney of a corona patient.
Fact: An incident of a doctor allegedly stealing the kidney was indeed reported in 2018. This incident has nothing to do with COVID-19. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
A reverse image search of the photo led us to an article dated way back to June 2018 which reported that Dr. Garg alleged stole the kidney of a patient during a surgery to remove stones. Images like the ones in the post were published in this article. With this, we can conclude that the incident is an old one.
A simple google search using the keywords ‘UP doctor Kidney selling’ led us to many news articles reporting the same incident in 2018. According to these reports, the incident took place in 2018 in Muzaffarnagar, UP where a doctor named Vibhu Garg was arrested for allegedly stealing the kidney of a patient. These news articles can be read here and here.  With this, we can conclude that the incident has nothing to do with COVID-19, as India reported the first COVID-19 case in January 2020.
To sum it up, though the incident of kidney theft was indeed reported way back in 2018, the news is going viral now falsely linking it to COVID-19.
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