‘Paanch ‘O’ Pappu chahiye. Kitney hain?’

“Hame paanch ‘O’ Pappu chahiye. Tumhare pass kitney hain?” This is how Dr Amit Kumar and his accomplices communicated whenever they referred to the victims of the illegal kidney racket.

Translated, this meant: “We need five ‘O’ Pappus. How many do you have.” Only that ‘Pappu’ here was a code name for unsuspecting donors. And ‘five O Pappus’ meant ‘five O blood group donors’.

Elaborating on the modus operandi, Moradabad SSP Prem Prakash said: “The gang members used to call poor kidney donors ‘Pappu’ during their conversation with field agents. Perhaps such coded language helped them to run the racket for such a long time.”

According to the police, Vidyprakash alias Pappu — who tipped the police about the presence of the gang members in Moradabad — corroborated the fact that the gang members had developed a code language to run their activities.

Explaining how the racket was busted, the SSP said Vidyprakash called up an agent, who said they needed 'Paanch O Pappus’. “We then searched for five O blood group constables and sent them along with Vidyprakash as kidney donors,” he said.

“Soon after busting the case, we got busy and hence got little time to work on this line,” the Prakash said, adding the police would will try to get more details about the code language from the gang’s agents. The SSP said the agents had strict instructions from the higher-ups to send donors to hospitals for medical examination only in good clothes. “They used to send them to hospitals for check-up in a presentable attire,” he said.