Blowing the lid off an organised, international kidney transplant racket in the capital, police have arrested two personal secretaries of a nephrologist at Apollo hospital along with three middlemen, who arranged donors for transplant patients for a hefty price. Aditya Singh, 24, and Shailesh Saxena, 31, worked for an Apollo doctor while Aseem Sikdar, 37, Satya Prakash, 30, and Devashish Moulik, 30, were touts who lured poor people into selling one of their kidneys.

Police have also booked the donors and are tracking the recipients. The cops are in the process of sending a notice to the hospital administration asking them to join investigations.

Those arrested have revealed that donors were paid Rs 3-4 lakh while recipients had to shell out up to Rs 50 lakh for the transplant.

The donors were procured from Bengal, Kanpur, Delhi and Chennai, where the touts had local scouts. Prospective donors were brought to Delhi and made to stay in luxury hotels while the pre-surgery tests were conducted.