BY: P. Jayaram, India Correspondent

NEW DELHI - INDIA plans to tighten its organ transplant laws and put more curbs on foreigners who come for such operations.

Under proposed amendments to the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, foreigners, who make up 30 per cent to 40 per cent of these transplants - mostly kidney and liver - would need to find donors from their own country.

India has also proposed enhancing jail terms and fines for violations of the Act.

The move comes six months after a multi-million-dollar kidney transplant racket was busted in Gurgaon, an affluent Delhi suburb.

The racket involved a network of doctors, nurses, a clandestine hospital run from a three-storey house and mobile testing labs.

Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said then the government would amend the organ transplantation Act to enhance penalties for the illegal organ trade.

Under the Act, only immediate relatives - parents, siblings, spouses - can donate an organ to the patient. It also allows a person to donate organs 'by reason of affection or attachment towards the recipient or for any other special reasons', a clause that experts say is grossly misused.

The amendments propose doubling the jail term for doctors, donors and recipients involved in illegal organ transplants from five to 10 years, and raise fines from 10,000 rupees to 500,000 rupees (S$315 to S$15,800).

For others involved in running transplant rackets, the amendments propose to increase the jail term from seven to 10 years and the fine from 500,000 rupees to 1 million rupees.

According to health experts, the proposed amendments will make it mandatory for foreigners having the transplant operations in India to get donors from their own country, with proof that the organs are from their relatives, in line with India's laws.

Experts say that one out of every 10 Indians - or about 100 million of the country's one billion population - suffers from some form of kidney ailment, creating a huge demand for such transplants.

But the Gurgaon kidney racket showed that many foreigners were also coming to India for illegal transplant operations.

Investigations point to the involvement of politicians, bureaucrats and police, besides doctors, nurses and other hospital staff, in the racket.

It was also found that many poor labourers and farmers were duped into parting with their kidneys for 10,000 to 20,000 rupees each, and that the organs were then sold for 1.5 million to 2 million rupees.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on July 8, 2008.