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Friday,
August 30, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Indian
doctor faces probe Hearing on
Benazir’s case postponed Involve
parliaments too, Heptulla tells Summit Cops
probing ultras’ Al-Qaida links Ministers
clash with Afghan TV chief |
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Indian doctor faces probe
London, August 29 Dr Bhagat Singh Makkar told an undercover journalist for The Sunday Times, who was posing as a patient, that he could arrange a kidney from a live donor in India. Dr Makkar, (62) was shown on a tape recording of the conversation to have told the “patient” that buying a kidney from India would be “no problem”. The case is being heard before the General Medical Council (GMC). Dr Makkar offered to have the transplant done at the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, or at Guy’s Hospital in south London. The case has raised a huge controversy in Britain, with all newspapers reporting the hearings prominently. Dr Makkar, who has a practice in Lewisham in south London, said it was easy to find poor people in Mumbai or Hyderabad who would be willing to part with a kidney. Sale of organs is banned in India. It is also banned by the GMC’s guidelines on transplants and by Britain’s Human Organ Transplant Act of 1989. According to evidence presented before the GMC, donors are paid about Rs 200,000 for an organ in India, but these organs are sold in Britain for about three times as much. Dr Makkar was said to have been setting up an organisation called Health Services International to supply organs to patients in Britain. The conversation was taped by Paul Samrai, a freelance journalist working for The Sunday Times. He went to Makkar’s clinic in March last year saying his father was ill and he could not find a kidney donor in Britain. Dr Makkar was recorded as saying: “I can fix that for you. Do you want it done here, do you want it done in Germany or do you want it done in India?” When asked if a donor could be found in Britain, Dr Makkar said: “Asian donors are available here, I’ll find them. I know the consultant who is in Guy’s Hospital. We’ll get one from somewhere or other.” He was then recorded as saying it would be cheaper and easier to find donors in India. “I mean in south India, like in Mumbai, Hyderabad, the donor will be less expensive than Punjab. There are plenty of poor people in these cities.” Dr Makkar was first suspected when Samrai was given his name by the owner of the Jalandhar Hospital in India. The owner told Samrai that Dr Makkar could arrange a transplant in Britain, and gave him the phone number and email. The journalist then met Makkar, who said Samrai could pay him directly for the organs. Dr Makkar denied the charge. His counsel Charles Foster said the evidence should be thrown out because it was gained by deception. Dr Makkar was placed under suspension in December. He arrived in Britain from Rajasthan in 1971.
IANS |
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Hearing on Benazir’s case postponed
Karachi, August 29 The petition was to have been heard by a five-judge Bench at the Sindh provincial High Court, but proceedings were adjourned because Ms Bhutto’s senior counsel was sick, Attorney Farooq Naik said. Ms Bhutto, who has been living in self-exile in London and Dubai since 1998, is contesting a decree by President Pervez Musharraf made earlier this month barring “absconders” from running for public office. She is accused of a range of corruption charges steaming from her two terms as the Prime Minister. She left the country shortly before her conviction in corruption case in 1998, which was later thrown out by the Supreme Court which ordered a re-trial. Twice this year Ms Bhutto has been convicted of absconding for failing to return to Pakistan to appear at two separate graft trials in May and July. She has filed nomination papers, through representatives from her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), for two parliamentary seats from her home town Larkana, 460 km West of here. The papers will be scrutnised by election officials on Friday and Sunday.
AFP |
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Involve
parliaments too, Heptulla tells Summit Johannesburg, August 29 She was speaking at the opening of a two-day parliamentary meeting that is being held as part of the world summit on sustainable development in this city. Ms Heptulla made a plea to the national delegations to ensure that parliaments were explicitly mentioned in the final documents of the summit. “Let me emphasise that parliaments, in their law-making capacity, their budget-making authority and their role as monitors of the executive, are central to the implementation of what will be agreed (here),” she said. “We must voice the aspirations of our people at the negotiations so that the final document is comprehensive and is reflective of popular aspirations. “Heads of states and governments have recognised in the millennium declaration the need for closer cooperation between the UN and national parliaments. “I believe that we can take an important step towards achieving that millennium goal through the world summit and the implementation process it will hopefully launch.” Ms Heptulla said present consumption and production patterns undermine the sustainable development of future generations. “It has to be recognised that we cannot continue to live beyond the planet’s carrying capacity. Ultimately, this whole debate is a moral one — about the kind of the world we want. A world in which we do not live for a moment’s greed at the expense of others. We aspire for a world in which individual interests would be subordinate to the common good.” Ms Heptulla referred to Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals for an equitable world. “He propounded the remarkable theory of trusteeship, where the rich were to be the trustees of the interests of the poor, present generations were to be the trustees of the well-being of future generations; and man as the most intelligent creature was the trustee of the entire creation and its diversity.” Earlier, she also participated in a panel discussion organised by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the UN Volunteers, sponsored by the IPU. She spoke on what parliaments could do and how parliamentarians could contribute to new partnerships. “The IPU Council in its resolution passed last year recognised that voluntary action contributes significantly to promoting social cohesion, poverty reduction, sustainable development, democracy and good governance,” she said.
IANS |
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Cops probing ultras’ Al-Qaida links
Peshawar, August 29 The militants — 11 Pakistanis and one Afghan — from the banned Harkatul Mujahideen organisation, were captured on Tuesday during a raid on a bungalow in a congested district of Peshawar, 40 km east of the Afghan border. “We are investigating every aspect, including their links with any foreign group, including the Al-Qaida,” a senior officer from the police force’s Crimes Investigation Department said. The militants had been planning attacks, the police told magistrate Akhtar Zareef Khan during a remand hearing in a local court yesterday. “Our informer told us they were militants and were planning acts of sabotage. A remand is required in order to find out the facts,” a police investigator told the court. The Harkatul Mujahideen had been listed as a terrorist organisation by the USA. Pakistan froze its accounts and closed its offices last year.
AFP |
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Ministers clash with Afghan TV chief
Kabul, August 29 A government commission set up to review the television and radio output in Afghanistan has decreed that music by popular Afghan women singers should be broadcast at prime time as part of a general shake-up. But Engineer Ishaq, the hardline head of state television in Kabul, has responded by not only refusing to air music featuring women singers, but also blocking the hugely popular Bollywood films. Culture minister Makhdoom Raheen has also said Indian films should continue to be broadcast along with women singers.
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An Indian doctor is facing
investigation for offering to supply human organs to patients in Britain
on the black market. Dr Bhagat Singh Makkar told an undercover
journalist for The Sunday Times, who was posing as a patient, that he
could arrange a kidney from a live donor in India.
Karachi, August 29
