Unanswered Questions

Noida and its adjoining area have emerged as the national centre of big timecrime and murder. Located on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, Noida is adjacentto district Ghaziabad in UP. In the two months before June 2008 according to thepolice 46 children have gone missing from Ghaziabad. A class IV student, Arjun,who disappeared over six months ago returned and described how he had beenkidnapped and taken to Gujarat. According to him along with other children hewas fed and made to work. Periodically, blood was taken from the children. Oneday he claims to have witnessed children being "hacked" to pieces. Heescaped and fled back home. The police were dismissive of his account. Thenumber of missing children in Ghaziabad was unearthed by a social organization,Bharat Nawjawan Sabha, which extracted the official admission through anapplication filed under the Right to Information Act. Kapil, a key member of theorganization that surveyed the area, said: "Our hunch is that there is ahuman organ trafficking racket at work here."

Preceding this there was a spate of startling crimes in Noida. The notoriousNithari murders in Noida remain unexplained. Moninder Singh Pandher and hisservant, Kohli, were implicated in the mass murder of over 30 victims, mostlychildren. None of the police theories for the motive of the murders carriedconviction to survive. The police theory of cannibalism was discarded after theservant vomited, unable to eat human flesh when being tested.  The policealleged that the servant was a psychopath who murdered call girls afterprocuring them for Pandher. But why were so many victims children? One child whomiraculously escaped their clutches accused two maidservants serving Pandher ofunsuccessfully trying to lure her. If the servant was a psychopath why were themaidservants complicit in the crime? Where are the maidservants now? Earlierthey were missing. The CBI investigation revealed that the Noida police weresystematically bribed by Pandher to protect his servant. One woman policeofficer was dismissed and faces prosecution. Was she the lone recipient ofbribes or were there other bribed colleagues in the Noida police?

This scribe had pointed out that in China after initial denials the governmenthad admitted the existence of a well organized organ trade racket exposed by adoctor serving the Army. The clients for this lucrative global trade are in theWest and elsewhere. In Pandher’s house the police had found organs and piecesof flesh packed in polythene bags. The bones and skeletons of the victims werefound in adjoining drains. According to initial reports the police also foundsurgical instruments in the house.

Even as the investigation of these ghastly mass murders was continuing, thekidney racket being operated from Noida was unearthed. A spurious surgeon, DrKumar, was illegally extracting kidneys from poor victims and selling them torich donors. He was aided by a Chinese nurse resident in Manipur who wasdetained by the police for questioning. Attempting to escape, Dr Kumar fled toNepal where he was apprehended. Earlier the doctor had run a clinic indulging inthis illegal activity in Mumbai. He had been exposed by authorities.Subsequently he sold his clinic to the relative of a powerful politician. Heshifted his operations to Noida. In Noida he was seen by witnesses to regularlyvisit the house of Pandher at dusk. The Noida residents who saw these visitsinformed the police. That case is still being investigated although the DrKumar-Pandher link has not been commented upon by the police.

Currently attention is hogged by the murder in Noida of a 14 year old girl and amanservant in the house of a dentist, Dr Talwar. The police have held the fatherof the girl for questioning. The police explanations of the crime have beenvaried and self-contradictory. The servant had reportedly told a neighbour thathe feared for his life before he was murdered. His body was discovered a dayafter the girl’s murder although both are thought to have been murdered aroundthe same time. The parents were in a room adjoining the girl’s bedroom whenshe was murdered. Another former servant of the Talwar household had alsoreportedly confided to a neighbour that he feared for his life. He too is saidto have been found dead in a canal (though now there seems to be somecontradiction about the identity of the dead body). The police seem to rule outfoul play. The CBI has held Dr Talwar’s compounder on suspicion of committingthe murder. The police have not advanced any motive. But now the CBI is hintingthat the murders were "pre-meditated". Was it to silence Aarushi andHemraj who knew something? If so, what did they know? The compounder is fromNepal where kidney racketeer Dr Kumar fled in his bid to evade arrest. But healso managed to allege in front of cameras on June 10 that "investigatingagencies and doctors were colluding to frame him in an attempt to save thefather of the slain girl." 

See the sequence of events, the proximity of the crimes committed, the newinformation about missing children in adjoining Ghaziabad, and, mostimportantly, the involvement of medical professionals. Does not the suspicionabout organ trade voiced by the Bharat Nawjawan Sabha deserve seriousconsideration?