Pune: The prosecution on Monday told a magisterial court that police needed sufficient time to question Dr Ajay Taware, the suspended Sassoon General Hospital doctor, in custody in relation to the 10 kidney swap transplants that were cleared by regional authorisation committee for organ transplant in 2022 when he was heading it. Assistant commissioner of police (crime) Ganesh Ingale and his team produced Taware before the court at the end of his initial police remand. Prosecutor Digambar Khopade submitted that police had already secured the relevant papers, video evidence of interviews of donors and receivers in these 10 transplant cases from Sassoon hospital, bank details, and related documents. Taware has so far not cooperated with police, he said.Defence lawyer Sudhir Shah said that his client had been wrongly implicated in the case. After hearing both sides, judicial magistrate first class S R Badave extended Taware’s police custody till June 4. On May 28, police secured Taware’s custody from Yerawada central prison where he had been lodged since his arrest on May 27, 2024, in the blood sample swap case linked to the Porsche Taycan car crash on May 19 last year.Police formally arrested him in the 2022 kidney swap transplant case at Ruby Hall Clinic based on a state health department inquiry panel’s report in 2022 that indicted him of misusing his official position to clear the transplant proposal based on bogus persons and forged documents. Taware headed regional authorisation committee as well as Sassoon authority committee and was medical superintendent of the hospital at the time when the transplant process took place and was completed at Ruby Hall Clinic.On Monday, Khopade submitted that police needed time to determine if any other person from the medical field or any other individual was involved in the crime. He said that Taware has so far given vague and misleading replies when asked to explain on what basis regional authorisation committee granted permission to the donors and recipients when there were discrepancies in the documents, such as their age and their movements, which were also found to be suspicious. They could not provide satisfactory replies to the questions posed by the committee, he submitted.There were discrepancies in the statements of a man and a woman, who were shown as organ donor and recipient, pertaining to the sale of their agricultural land, the prosecutor said. Police are in the process of analysing Taware’s bank accounts to determine if he received any pecuniary benefits from the crime. His call detail records are also being analysed for the purpose of collecting evidence, he added.
