Three years ago, 28-year-old Lakshmi (name changed to protect identity) decided to sell her eggs. She worked part-time as a waiter in Mumbai, about 60 km from her home in Badlapur, but was not able to make ends meet. “I was desperate for work and money,” she says. Each job offered only between ₹250 and ₹300 per day.
Lakshmi says she left her husband to start a new life when he moved in with another woman with whom she had a child. She adds, “We were married for eight years. It was an inter-caste marriage. My husband’s family was pressurizing her to marry someone from her own caste.”
While her husband was from the agricultural community, a subcaste of fishermen, Lakshmi was a Mahar, listed as a Scheduled Caste.
“I was not able to earn enough money to rent a house and live on my own,” she says, adding that she was forced to live with friends for a year.
During that year, while on a train to Mumbai for work, he met 44-year-old Sulochana Gadekar. She told Lakshmi that she could make some “quick money” through egg donation. “He told me to look at it as a social service for women who can’t bear children of their own. He said this is a common practice in IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) centres.”
Like many women, Lakshmi had seen the boards of IVF centers and did not think it was illegal. In India, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 allows egg donation only once in the lifetime of a woman carrying a child. It prohibits commercialization and prescribes medical insurance for the donor.
Gadekar offered Lakshmi accommodation at his home in Vangani, about 25 km from Badlapur. The prospect of a rent-free place to live and cash brought him relief. He was paid ₹15,000 for the first cycle that took place in Gadekar’s house.
After a month, Lakshmi moved out and got her own rented accommodation in Vangani, a 1RK (room and kitchen) unit, and decided to undergo the egg donation process again.
“I went through this cycle eight times. Each cycle took about a month,” she says. For this he remembers going to Nashik and Thane and being paid between ₹12,000 and ₹25,000.
She says she ultimately had to stop donating eggs when she was diagnosed with thyroid problems. Six months ago he had a pelvic problem. “I think my health complications are related to donating so many eggs,” she says.
Lakshmi has gone back to her job as a gig worker in the catering industry. In her sparse home, she sits on an old wooden sofa, its sponge open, and says, “I would donate eggs again if I could. I still need the money.” She cries only when she talks about her husband.
Gadekar was arrested on 18 February this year. According to Maharashtra Police, he is part of an inter-state network of clinics, pharmacies and egg-harvesting agents, all of which are operating illegally. Since then, police have made six more arrests. The two other main accused are also agents: Ashwini Rupesh Chabukswar, 29, and Manjusha Wankhede, 46.
Others named as accused in the first information report lodged at Badlapur (East) police station are Sonal Gurudev Grewal, 24, who allegedly operated the sonography machine at Bhagwan Hospital in Ulhasnagar without formal training; Dr. Amol Patil, Director of Malti IVF Center in Nashik; and 38-year-old pharmacist Sumit Bhagwan Sonkamble were allegedly involved in arranging the logistics and documentation. Electrician Satish Dilip Chaudhary, who reportedly worked with Patil, was also arrested.
The flat of accused Sulochana Gadekar was raided by the police and several vials of hormonal injections were recovered. | Photo Credit: Emmanuel Yogini
Police are investigating the role of Rajesh Jammu Nehalani, 47, owner of Bhagwan Hospital, and are examining documents and medical records seized during searches conducted at several hospitals. According to the police, Malti IVF Center was given a license to operate in Nashik, but its branch in Thane was operating without authorisation.
According to market research, consulting and advisory firm Allied Market Research, the IVF market, a subset of the healthcare industry, was valued at $883.50 million in 2022. It is estimated that it will cross $4667.80 million by 2032.
Lakshmi is one of the 10 women who have been identified as victims of an alleged IVF scam.
modus operandi
Three days before Gadekar’s arrest, a woman arrived at a government health center in Badlapur East. She told the doctor on duty that she was not paid for the donated eggs. The woman assumed the government was paying for the egg donation because Gadekar had told her it was part of a social contribution.
The doctor noted her complaint and Gadekar’s name and alerted the police.
Investigators raided Gadekar’s residence on the 13th floor of a gated housing society in Joveli village on the outskirts of Badlapur and recovered several vials of hormonal injections, worth around ₹8 lakh.
According to the police, agents will contact women suffering from financial difficulties. They will offer amounts between ₹18,000 and ₹30,000 to potential donors. Women who laid more than five eggs were promised more money. Gadekar would give them shelter at her residence for 10 to 12 days and administer daily hormonal injections.
Doctors say the purpose of these injections is to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs in a single cycle. Police say that the egg extraction was done without medical consultation.
Multiple teams are investigating the case, Deputy Commissioner of Police Sachin Gore of Ulhasnagar police said at a recent press conference. “Preliminary investigation revealed that the three main accused arrested were in direct contact with IVF centres. Inter-state links, financial trail and involvement of medical professionals are being investigated,” he said.
Digital evidence obtained from mobile phones seized from the accused indicated that the donors were transported to various locations. Investigators say the data shows that after being given hormonal injections at transit points, the women were taken to medical facilities within Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru, parts of Telangana and Maharashtra, including Nagpur, Pune and Nashik, where the eggs were extracted.
Police say fake Aadhaar cards were used to make it difficult to trace the victims. Fake Aadhaar cards were found at the residences of Gadekar and Chaudhary.
“We are keeping an eye on 30 to 35 agents and trying to trace the recipients of the harvested eggs,” says a police officer.
creation and destruction of life
With Gadekar in jail, her second husband lives alone in the 500-600-square-foot house they moved into this January in Joveli village, which has almost no trees. The 16-floor apartment block is next to a highway and close to an industrial area. The cost of a house here is around ₹50 lakh.
He says he has liver cirrhosis and Gadekar was the “main breadwinner”. He says he lost his job as a watch repairer in Mumbai when his employers learned about his wife’s arrest.
He says, “Twenty years ago, after our marriage, I realized that she was an egg donor and a surrogate mother. Soon, she became an agent. Offers came from doctors to find other women to donate eggs.”
He says that when the police raided the house, they did not produce any search or arrest warrant. He says, “All this happened after 9.30 pm. The search continued till 11 pm. They took him to the police station and then produced the arrest warrant.”
He points to a wooden cupboard and says that they had just built it, but the police broke it. He told that hormonal injections were recovered from here. “I don’t have any money now, so I’m not sure how I’ll survive. The only person earning was Sulochana. Now I have to try and get bail for her.”
Medical professionals have repeatedly highlighted the health risks associated with unsupervised egg donation. “The donors are receiving injections of menotropin (hormonal injections which were recovered from Gadekar’s house). If high doses are given several times in a lifetime to induce ovulation repeatedly, it increases the risk of ovarian cancer,” says Dr Sainath Bairagi, a Kalyan-based obstetrician-gynecologist, who explains the complications caused by the drugs used in such procedures.
He says immediate side effects can be life-threatening. “This causes ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. This can lead to fluid accumulation in the body. This is a life-threatening condition. No one should donate eggs repeatedly.”
far from badlapur
Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Chitra Wagh, who raised the matter in the Legislative Council, claimed that some women were forced to donate eggs up to 10 times. House Deputy Speaker Neelam Gore then directed Minister of State for Home (Urban) Yogesh Kadam to cancel the licenses of the doctors allegedly involved in the scam.
Health Minister Prakash Abitkar assured the Assembly that an investigation would be conducted and warned that action would be taken against the culprits.
According to government data, there are 860 IVF centers in Maharashtra. The health minister said these centers would be linked to a centralized surveillance system, but did not give any timeline. He said that joint inspection by the Home and Health departments would be done through committees of Superintendent of Police and Civil Surgeon.
The state government indicated that it may invoke the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act, 1999 if the investigation reveals a larger criminal conspiracy. There is a provision in this law that if found guilty, a person can be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Rupali Chakankar, who resigned from the post of chairperson of the State Women’s Commission on March 20, had visited Badlapur on March 5 to review the matter. She met with police officers, the doctor at the government health center who had alerted the police about the illegal network, and the mayor of the local city council.
Addressing journalists, he said, “Although illegal harvesting of eggs has happened in Badlapur, its roots are spread across the state. From today, action will be taken against illegal IVF and sonography centers in and around Badlapur. We will dig up the roots of this network.”
Chakankar resigned from his post over his alleged links with a self-styled godman who was arrested for exploiting hundreds of women in Nashik district.
Meanwhile, the woman who first approached the doctor in Badlapur East for alleged outstanding money for repeated egg removal has not spoken again, even to investigators. Police say she has left her home and may have run away.
chinmay.r@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
