Pune Porsche case accused doctor now held in kidney transplant racket
Pune (PTI): Police on Thursday arrested Pune's Sassoon General Hospital's former medical superintendent Dr Ajay Taware in connection with an alleged kidney transplant racket at a leading private hospital here, officials said.
Taware is currently lodged at the Yerwada Central Jail here following arrest last year for allegedly tampering with the blood samples of a 17-year-old boy accused of crashing a Porsche car into a motorbike in Pune's Kalyani Nagar and killing two persons.
The city crime branch has now taken him into custody in connection with the 2022 kidney transplant racket at the Ruby Hall Clinic, a leading private hospital here, police said.
"We have taken Dr Ajay Taware into custody in the kidney racket case and he will be produced before the court today," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Nikhil Pingale said.
In 2022, Taware was head of the Regional Authorisation Committee that approved kidney transplants.
The Pune police in May 2022 registered a case against 15 persons, including the managing trustee of the Ruby Hall Clinic and some of its employees, in connection with an alleged malpractice during a kidney transplant procedure in March that year.
A woman from Kolhapur, who was allegedly promised Rs 15 lakh, had fraudulently posed as the wife of a man who needed a transplant and donated her kidney in 2022 to a young woman patient. In turn, the young woman’s mother donated her kidney to the man.
Such a swap involving two patients and their relatives is carried out when the patients cannot receive a kidney from their own kin because of a blood group mismatch.
On March 29, 2022, four days after undergoing the transplant surgery at the Ruby Hall Clinic, the woman revealed her real identity after she had a dispute over money.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
