An advertising message offering three crore rupees for kidney transplantation is being widely circulating on WhatsApp. A person proclaiming himself as Doctor Ajay Agarwal has shared this message to interested Kidney donors. He asks interested kidney donors to fill in personal details and send them to his WhatsApp number. Let’s verify the authenticity of this message.
Claim: WhatsApp forward message offering three crore rupees for Kidney donation.
Fact: The Government of India constituted Authorization Committee (AC) has the authority to approve or reject organ transplants between the recipient and donors other than the first relatives. Authorization Committee ensures that the organ donors are not being exploited for monetary consideration to donate their organs. Without the permission of the Authorization Committee, a non-relative donor cannot donate their organs to the recipient, unless he is a deceased person. Similar fraudulent messages have been going viral for quite some time now. Hence, this WhatsApp message offering money for Kidney donation is fraudulent. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To find the details of this kidney transplantation advertisement, we contacted the mobile numbers provided in the message. A person impersonating Dr. Ajay Agarwal had spoken to us on phone. When we asked him about the details of his hospital and their official website, he had disconnected our phone call. We could not find any hospital with the name ‘Kidney Organ Bank’ in India. A similar message was found circulating on social media since January 2021. ‘India Today’ published an article on a similar WhatsApp message in 2018. This article reported that a Bangalore man had fallen prey to a similar fraudulent message on organ donation and tried to sell his kidney for 1.6 crore rupees.
Raising concerns over the illegal organ transplantations in the country, the Government of India has introduced ‘The Transplantation of Human Organ Act, 1994’ (THO). To regulate the transplant activities, the Central Government had constituted Authorization Committee (AC) and Appropriate Authority (AA) in each state or Union Territory. The primary duty of the Authorization Committee is to ensure that the donor is not being exploited for monetary consideration to their organ. The Authorization Committee has the authority to approve or reject organ transplants between the recipient and donors other than first relatives.
The Government of India has classified living donors as either first relatives (like spouse, mother, father, son, daughter, and brother) or a non-related donor. In the circumstances of no first relative donors, the recipient and the non-related donor are required to seek special permission from the government-appointed Authorization Committee. They should appear for an interview in front of the committee to prove that the motive of donation is purely out of altruism or affection for the recipient. Without the permission of the Authorization Committee, a non-relative donor cannot donate their organs to the recipient, unless he is a deceased person. Apart from these methods, an organ recipient can move for another alternative method of organ transplantation i.e; Swap Transplantations.
According to the guidelines issued in the THO act, a medical practitioner who rendered his services for illegal organ transplantation shall be punished with a maximum imprisonment of five years. Also, the accused name shall be reported to the respective State Medical Council for taking necessary action, including the removal of his name from the register of the Council for two years. Any person convicted in commercial dealings of Human Organs shall be punished with a maximum imprisonment of seven years.
Several news websites have published news articles on these fraudulent messages circulating on WhatsApp. They can be read here, here, and here. Cybercrime officials from different states have alarmed people about these fraudulent messages on organ donation. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the message of soliciting Kidney donation for money is fraudulent.
To sum it up, the WhatsApp messages offering money for kidney transplantations are fraudulent.
