While Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is cooling his heels in prison, which will be his address for the next 20 years, the Dera is witnessing one controversy after another. The latest one making news is that the Dera may have carried out illegal organ transplants and stem cell treatment at its hospital.
Dera's Shah Satnam Ji Speciality Hospital in Sirsa, spread over 1.25 lakh square feet and designed in the shape of a heart, offers a number of facilities according to its website. But if it did carry out organ transplants and stem cell treatment, it could be considered illegal as the hospital was not registered with the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO) or Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (ROTTO).
NOTTO as well as ROTTO have confirmed that the Dera's hospital was not registered with them. "This hospital is not registered with us," the Times of India quoted NOTTO director Dr Vimal Bhandari as saying.
The hospital also reportedly did not seek permission – a mandatory procedure – from the National Apex Committee when it claimed to have conducted a stem cell surgery in 2014. "No approval was sought from the panel from this hospital," said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, secretary, department of health research, told the daily.
Not just its treatments, questions are being raised about the doctors at the hospital as well, considering only one doctor is registered with the Indian Medical Association of Sirsa. "We have no information about doctors working there nor do we have any authority to ask these doctors to register with us," said Sirsa IMA president Dr K K Goyal.
Meanwhile, the revelations do not stop there. It is now being said that the Dera sent many bodies to the GCRG Institute of Medical Sciences in Uttar Pradesh "without requisite permission and death certificates."
A Union heath ministry note, written on August 19 and sent to the UP government said that the college simply said that the bodies had been donated by the Dera and it wasn't known how these people had died.
The "explanation offered by the college in obtaining 14 cadavers from Dera Sacha Sauda without requisite permission and death certificates is a serious issue," the note said.
It now looks like the Dera Sacha Sauda is in for more trouble.
