A young man was found hanging from a fan in his one room flat in the industrial suburb of Diva on the Central railway on January 8. The door was locked from inside and if it were not for the stink from the decomposing body, he might not have been found so soon. But he had had a fight with his young wife who left, with their child, for her home in Bihar, three days into this brand new year, so full of promise for some, but not for the young man hanging from his ceiling fan. Yet, unlike hundreds of millions of others like him, struggling to make sense of a sadly unequal existence, he had had his moment in the sun.
For a couple of months from July 14, 2016, he basked in the public gaze as the chap who provided the evidence that there was a kidney racket going on at a reputed hospital in the suburbs. This led to the arrest of 14 people, including doctors, agents, a tribal woman who was “donating” her kidney, and the patient who required the organ desperately. We don’t know if members of his own family had tested for the procedure, which would have made it legal. We do know that it is not easy or even common for people to handover their kidneys, even to family members, even in India, supposedly home to the strongest culture of family in the world.
It was all quite dramatic, with the police barging into the hospital and causing a sensation in the way of the worst Hindi movies. For days after that, the newspapers were full of the story, which then became predictably confusing. Three months later, the would-be recipient had died, the tribal donor had (rightly) received bail, as had the doctors, the kingpin and his “aides” were in jail, investigations were on, the police claimed 1000 pages of a charge-sheet had been prepared, and our young man must have been on top of the world. Then, reality caught up.
His name was Sundar Singh. Or Sundar Singh Jatav. Or Sundar Balvan Singh, depending upon which newspaper you were looking at. Likewise, he was 25 or 26. He was a whistleblower, or a victim or part of the fraud, depending upon who was telling the story. He was a kidney donor who had been duped by the “kingpin” of money but then went on to join him. Promised Rs 2 lakh (or Rs 5 lakh), he had received only Rs 15,000 (or Rs 55,000). Whatever the confusion, it was thanks to him and an activist that the raid took place, the operations were stopped.
Fast forward to today. The hospital is operating normally, as are the doctors, though there are no kidney transplants going on since the licences required to do these have been suspended. The 1000-page chargesheet prepared, the police waits for the cumbersome judicial process to gather steam. This is India, what did you expect?
Sunder Singh’s picture is the same in all the stories on his suicide. Challenging, young, happy, gelled pomp in place, it is the quintessential selfie to be posted on Insta or FB. In other words, like much of social media content, it is fake.
The truth is, he was the ultimate loser. No job, no prospects, no hope and with only one kidney, he had the added burden of having to look out for a young family. He must have discovered long ago, that not every pav bhaji or vada pao seller ends up as a success story of “entrepreneurship”. It’s a good thing he does not know that his entire life story has already been reduced to a footnote that elicits just a sympathetic tongue click (if that!) and a switch to something more interesting.
May Sunder Singh at least rest peacefully.
