The chargesheet before the special court has the statements of 33 witnesses, including the patients from whom the bribe was allegedly accepted by the duo.The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), in a chargesheet filed last week against social worker Tushar Sawarkar of J J Hospital and organ transplant coordinator Sachin Salve, has claimed that Sawarkar got an approval for a patient’s kidney transplant procedure in September 2018 within a day of being paid a bribe of Rs 10,000.
Sawarkar and Salve were arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 80,000 for processing an organ transplant procedure of another patient in October 2018 within a month of the previous alleged bribe.
According to the statement of a 32-year-old Andheri resident, he was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2017 and his mother-in-law had agreed to donate one of her kidneys to him. The man had approached Salve at S L Raheja Hospital and was told that the approval took “15 to 20 days”.
“He told me that if you need it immediately, you should meet Sawarkar and pay him a bribe,” the witness has told the ACB.
The chargesheet before the special court has the statements of 33 witnesses, including the patients from whom the bribe was allegedly accepted by the duo.
The 32-year-old has said in his statement that he took his documents for a meeting with the state authorisation committee for live organ transplants at J J Hospital on September 4, 2018, and thereafter met Sawarkar, who took a bribe of Rs 10,000 from him.
The next day, he received an approval for a kidney transplant, the patient added.
The case against the two was initiated after a complaint lodged by the relative of a patient named Jamaluddin Khan, who had made a request for a transplant.
The chargesheet includes statements of Khan, the complainant as well as senior officials of J J Hospital. Medical superintendent Sanjay Surase, who was heading the state regulation committee at the time of the incident, has also given his statement to the ACB.
He said he had previously received a complaint against Sawarkar against his rude behaviour before the committee. Surase also said, in his statement, that he no other members of the committee, which included other staffers of J J Hospital, were involved in seeking bribe for approving organ transplant.
Other evidence referred to in the chargesheet include transcripts of conversations of the accused seeking the alleged bribe, although a report from the forensic science laboratory is awaited, the ACB said.
The ACB had earlier said it was scrutinising 550 proposals cleared by Sawarkar since 2017 when he was appointed.
Sawarkar, who was suspended after the incident, and Salve were granted bail in December. After the case, the committee was shifted from J J Hospital to the Maharashtra Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER).
The sanction to prosecute Sawarkar, as he is a public servant, was also granted by the DMER.
