CHENNAI: Police in southern India are investigating reports of an illegal kidney donation racket that apparently preys on poor survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami, officials said on Wednesday.

There long have been reports -- some substantiated, others not -- of poor Indians illegally selling their kidneys. But authorities say the practice appears to have spiked in areas of Tamil Nadu state since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which destroyed fishing fleets here and left tens of thousands of people destitute.

Authorities were tipped off to the latest alleged organ racket by a non-governmental organisation that reported that some 150 women in Ernavur, a village built by poor tsunami survivors, had sold their kidneys to raise money over the past two years and that many of them had been never been fully paid.

“We have formed a special team which has started making preliminary inquiries with the women in Ernavur, and will later spread our inquiries to other slums,” Chennai Police Commissioner Letika Saran said on Wednesday.

While the number of kidneys sold in Ernavur, about 12 kilometres north of Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, is high, the demand for kidneys exists in the state.

P. Vijay Lakshimi, who chairs the state committee that authorises transplants, said about 60 to 70 kidneys are transplanted a month in Tamil Nadu.

It’s widely believed that not all are obtained legitimately, and a government official investigating the reports, M.S. Sangeetha, called poor tsunami survivors “easy prey” because selling kidneys was the only way they could come up with money “to meet an emergency.”

She said nearly all those who were believed to have sold their kidneys are women, who often occupy the lowest rungs of the village social ladder.

Many of the women said they had been promised up to 100,000 rupees for posing as relatives of the ill and going to Chennai hospitals to have one of their kidneys removed.

Sangeetha said the combination of poverty and the high demand for organs made the area ripe for exploitation.—AP