BLACK MARKET WITH HUMAN DEAD BODIES- A CASE IN INDIA

BLACK MARKET WITH HUMAN DEAD BODIES- A CASE IN INDIA A black market is a clandestine market which has some aspect of illegality or form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. In our day-to-day life, we damage our body and its organs, later resulting in the transplantation of them. It is due to the advancement in the medical field, which has enabled a person, to go through transplantation of organs and thus has resulted in an increase in demand for organs. According to the statistics an average donor stands at 0.08 persons as per million population, and the waitlist to that, is at very high stats, i.e. nearly 5 lac people are on the wait list for an organ to be transplanted, but life is too short for some people to reach in front of that line. When there is a fight between life and death, a man would give anything to save themselves, and would also go to any extent to save their loved ones. The people leave no stone unturned to live and win over death, whether the method adopted is legal or illegal. This gives rise to some other “shortcut procedures”, which further gave emergence to the birth of black market. This seems to be like a market where the person who pays, gets the commodity. As per the procedure laid down by the government of India under THE TRANSPLANTATION OF HUMAN ORGANS ACT, 1994, has defined certain legal sources in section 3 sub-clause (1) and (2) from where a person can receive an organ lawfully. From more than 150 years, many South Asian countries have been indulged in bone trade and have followed a route from remote South Asian villages to the medical schools, established in various developed countries. In U.S.A. most corpses receive a prompt burial, and bodies donated to science usually end up on the dissection table, their bones sawed into pieces and destined for cremation. So most skeletons used for the medical study comes by export. Most of the Asian countries are still developing, which act as a soft target of procurement of skeletons. Mainly, these activities have given birth to the black market. Since these activities are not in conformation with the prevalent rules and regulations in the country from which these skeletons are procured, it results in the violation of laws paves the way for the illicit market. India was the world's primary source of bones used in the medical study, renowned for producing specimens scrubbed to a pristine white patina and fitted with high-quality connecting hardware. In 1985, India banned the export of human remains which resulted in the collapse of the global supply of skeletons around the world. Soon western countries shifted to china and other eastern countries for the supply of skeletons. They had little experience producing display-quality specimens, and their products are regarded as inferior in comparison to their Indian counterparts. In various remote parts of India still, these practices are in existence. So what could be the remedy? The government of India has provided THE TRANSPLANTATION OF HUMAN ORGAN ACT, 1994, which prescribes all the necessary regulations for the organ removal, transplantation, storage and specifically defines the prevention of human organ commercial dealings. The following act of parliament received the assent of the president on 8^th July 1994. The parliament has no power to make laws for the states with respect to any of the matters aforesaid except as provided in articles 249 and 250 of the constitution. According to the clause (1) of article 252 of the constitution, the resolution has been passed by all the houses of the legislatures of the states of Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra to the effect that the matters aforesaid should be regulated in those states by parliament by law. Section 2(d) defines “brain stem death” as the stage at which all functions of the brain stem have permanently and irreversibly ceased. Further, it also talks about the authorized removal of an organ from the deceased body. Authority for removal of human organs from the body is defined in Section 4, 5 and 6 of transplantation of human organ act, 1994. Section 4(1) is read under the light of section 3(2) and section 3(3) which states that no facility shall be granted for the removal of any human organ from the body of deceased person if the person required to grant such facilities, or empowered to give such authority, has reason to believe that an inquest may be required to be held in relation to such body in pursuance of the provisions of any law for the time being in force. Further section 5, apply for the authority of removal of human organs in case of unclaimed bodies in hospitals and prison, whereas section 6, states the authority for removal of organs from bodies for post-mortem examination for medico-legal or pathological purposes. Section 11states “No donor and no person empowered to give authority for the removal of any human organ shall authorize the removal of any human organ for any purpose other than therapeutic purposes.” The famous Gurgaon kidney scandal came to light in January 2008. The kidney transplant racket took place in Moradabad an industrial township near New Delhi, India.  The victims of this scandal were the poor hailing from the nearby western Uttar Pradesh. These kidneys were transplanted to clients in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Greece. Amit Kumar the main accused of the scandal was arrested in Nepal on 7 February 2008.  He denies his involvement in all this.  Dr. Upender Dublesh and Dr. Amit Kumar the main accused in the case other than the rest of the five people arrest were terms by the CBI special court the punishment of,seven-year rigorous imprisonment and  a fine of over Rs. 60 lakhs each in March 2013. Though section 19 read with section 20 of Transplantation of Human Organ Act, 1994 states the punishment for commercial dealings in human organs and describes the punishable offenses in these scenarios. Whereas section 20 talks about the punishment for such offences, i.e. whoever contravenes any provision of this act or any rule made, or any condition of the registration granted, thereunder for which no punishment is separately provided in this act, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine which may extend to five thousand rupees. An overview of few cases explains it all... The panic spread in the whole country as the news feed with headlines of the exporters that kidnap innocent kids and kill, just to make currency out of their skeletons. The graveyards of West Bengal were cleaned up, which attracted criminal elements. The industry shuddered to a halt in March 1985, when a bone trader was arrested after exporting 1,500 child skeletons. They're relatively rare and illustrate transitional stages in osteological development, hence they have higher prices compared to adult ones. This drooled the criminal experts of human dead body’s black market, as they found it very convenient to kill innocent kids and make money. But they were unaware that, this move will give birth to a revolutionary tide in India. This revolutionary tide resulted in the enactment of Transplantation of human organ Act, 1994. As, months after the incident, vigilantes combed the cities for searching the members of the alleged kidnappers’ network. In September, an Australian tourist was killed and a Japanese tourist was beaten by a mob after rumors of their involvement in the incident. The act itself was enough to break India’s bone industry and in addition to it, Supreme Court interpreted that the national Import/Export Control Act to prohibit the export of human tissue. Although these prohibitions were not sufficient to break the backbone of black market mafias. Even after this incident, human dead bodies are still in trade and are flourishing equally. In 2015, another case came under the knowledge of legal authorities of India at Hyderabad, where 117 patients were admitted at the Medico-Legal Cases from Osmania General Hospital and Gandhi Hospital. They were admitted between January 1, 2015, and August 15, 2015. The shocking wave arose when these patients went missing and reported vanished. It came to light that there is some profitable market, for selling dead bodies in various parts of the country and, in the Hyderabad city to there are some private medical colleges that are willing to pay Rupees 3 lakh to Rupees15 lakh for each body, depending on the gender of the dead body. what recommendations could be made? As it is witnessed by the struggle of our own kit and kin, government enacted law against the trade human organ transplantation and ban against human dead body export/import, it has come to the knowledge that we need to analyse further in this direction and about the implementation of these rules and regulations at ground level. It is not only ethically immoral, inhumane but also heinous act to put a price tag on somebody’s body. In India, the human body is considered as sacred and is worshiped as if, it is a temple. Iran uses a hybrid system of free market and government control. There, vendors sell their organs to the government, which acts as an intermediary. It pays them and gives them free health insurance for one year. Donor recipients must be Iranian and they are required to work to pay for the cost of their organs. The system has virtually wiped out the waiting lists for donors. The problem does not only lies in selling dead bodies in the black market, but it is in, not utilizing those bodies legally, and filling the organ scarcity within the country. In India, around 200,000 people need a kidney every year, but only around 3% of the demand is met. Due to the problem of demand and supply. Around 15,000 can afford treatment but only 7,000 of these can afford transplants. Spain has come up with one alternative, it is, to institute a presumed consent system. They have a decal on their driver’s license which states that, whether you want your organs to be donated upon death or not? Under this system, that deal wouldn’t be necessary. You’d be presumed to consent unless it is specified that you “do not” consent to having your organs donated after death. Spain has instituted this program with significant success. In addition to presumed consent, Spain uses dispatching donor networks that monitor emergency rooms around the country. So far, the networks have seen only a 15% national rate of refusal. 24 countries of the European Union have this legal system, Spain and Belgium have the greatest success stories. As the world has come across suggestions to meet the scarcity of organs, our country seems to lag a bit behind in overcoming this problem. As amendments made in Spain and other European Union countries, and have had a great success rate, similarly if India enacts, and create new amendments in Transplantation of Human Organ Act, 1994, it would clearly help in overcoming this scarcity of organs, and transplantation-related problems. India has a massive population, and most of the citizens are unaware of organ donations, and moreover, they are not certain about donating them. If the presumed consent system is introduced in India, it would surely throw away the organ scarcity and also, it will put an end to illicit market of organs and dead bodies. As, because of the massive population, India has high death rate, and corpses with suitable organs are buried or burnt unnoticed and could not be put to the good use of them. So amendment of such provisions, surely will save numerous lives, and gift a better life to all those patients who are in hope to live and are on their death beds.