On the streets of Kathmandu, the sight of people begging for kidney treatment has become common. The organ in highest demand is the kidney and black market traffickers are meeting that demand. Up to 7,000 kidneys are obtained illegally every year.

Kavre, a tiny district close to Kathmandu is a ground zero for the black market organ trade in Nepal. Here, kidney trafficking rackets dupe the poor and uneducated into giving away a piece of themselves. The district has developed an unfortunate reputation as the “kidney bank of Nepal”.

Nawaraj Pariyar used to visit Kathmandu to find construction work. He was on a site in 2000 when the foreman approached him with a dubious offer: if he let doctors cut out a “hunk of meat” from his body, he would be given 30 lakhs – about $30,000.
What he wasn’t told: the piece of “meat” was actually his kidney. “The foreman told me that the meat will grow back,” Pariyar said.

The method is clever, and doesn’t involve bathtubs full of ice. Rather, it functions simply by fraud.

By picking victims from Nepal and taking them into India where most know little – if any – of the local language, their “business partners” forge the necessary documentation to claim kinship with the individual receiving the kidney, then make an appointment with the Indian hospital.

Kidney operations in India require a “No Objection Certificate” drafted by the Nepali embassy confirming the donor, but until recently, such certificates did not even come with photographs, making the system ludicrously easy to exploit.

Via CNN for the full article.