Scarlett Keeling: Goa's Lost Innocence

About a month ago the half-naked body of a 15-year old British girl was found on a Goa beach. Initially police said that Scarlett Keeling was only the most recent casualty of Goa's live fast and die partying lifestyle. Their initial crime report siad that she had dies of a drug overdose and drowning.. It took two weeks of agitating by her mother to get the police to preform a second autopsy. Their findings were that Scarlett had been drugged, raped and left to die. The mother has accused the police of taking part in a massive cover-up of her daughter's murder.

Nerlon Albuquerque, the sub-inspector who initially led the investigation has been suspended from duty, while the BBC reports that a senior police official hints and a broad internal conspiracy.

"It is a very complicated story. It has wider ramifications," a senior police official, who prefers anonymity, said.

He hints at influential local politicians being involved in the flourishing drug trade on the beach. - [via BBC]

Yesterday the police announced that they had solved the Keeling case and arrested two men who were said to have been in compromising positions with Keeling before her death. Placido Carvalho and Samson D'Souza have both been arrested. MSNBC reports

"The first arrested accused D'Souza has confessed to his role and has also named four others involved in the murder," Kumar said. The others named by D'Souza would be arrested after evidence against them was established, Kumar said.

But despite the confession, several questions remain--not the least of which were if the interrogations were fair, or if D'Souza confessed only under duress. Sources on the ground in Anjuna tell me that local people believe that D'Souza is only a scapegoat being used to pacify the media interest.

In a few hours I am catching a plane to Panji to report on the Keeling case and dig up whatever I can. For now, at least, the Goan Paradise seems to be lost.

The Bone Factory: India's Underground Trade in Human Remains

Manoj Pal: Dom and Cadaver Deflesher

It is pitch black and raining when I first meet Manoj Pal: a man who makes his living defleshing rotting cadavers. I am a hundred kilometers outside of Calcutta in a small village called Purbasthali where police confiscated more than 100 bright white human skeletons. The bones they found were on their way along a two hundred year old pipeline for human remains. The smugglers route begins on the banks of Indian rivers and ends in the sacred halls of medicine in Western countries. The skeletons Pal prepared could have fetch as much as $70,000 on the black market.

Manoj Pal is grunt labor for the industry. As part of the dom, or grave tending, caste his job is the most grim. Day and night he recovers bodies from a nearby cremation ghat. He binds the corpses in mosquito netting and soaks them in the river for a week. When the bodies are waterlogged and mostly consumed by fish and stray dogs he scrubs off the remaining flesh, dumps the bodies in a boiling solution of caustic chemicals and lets them dry in the sun.

Before he was arrested Pal's boss, Mukthi Biswas would sell bones to a medical supply company in Calcutta called Young Brothers for a few thousand rupees. From there the bones were wired together into free hanging skeletons and sold both domestically and abroad.

I spent three months piecing together the path that human bones take from Calcutta to the Western world for WIRED magazine. I found suppliers and buyers in well respected companies and universities across the United States. When I brought this to the attention of police in Calcutta they told me that they do not view grave robing as a serious crime. On the rare occasions that the police catch a grave robber, they mostly just let them off with a slap on the wrist.

The bone business dates back to colonial times when British doctors needed a steady supply of human skeletons to stock anatomy classes in England. Before they had set up a reliable system for preparing human skeletons on a mass scale there was an extreme shortage of bones available for study. It drove some British doctors to rob graves in their own neighborhoods. Some cemeteries were so notorious for skulduggery that there were frequent fist fights between grieving families and shovel-carrying medical students.

A bag of leg bones confiscated on the Bhutan Border

But with the advent of colonialism doctors began to look to Calcutta for fresh body supplies. By the mid 1800's Calcutta Medical College was sending hundred of bodies abroad every year. The trade continued to flourish until the 1980s. At its peak every aspiring doctor in the world bought a box of bones along with their first year's medical textbooks for about $300. Calcutta was exporting more than 60,000 skeletons a year making it a multi million dollar business.

But it couldn't last forever. In 1985 rumors began to surface that the bone dealers had run out of skeletons in Calcutta's graveyards and were killing children for their skeletons. Child skeletons are rarer than adult skeletons and fetched a higher price on the market. A man was arrested for exporting more than 1,500 child skeletons. A member of the legislature accused him of murder and put the nail in the coffin for the legal industry. By 1986 exports had all but stopped. The 13 original bone exporters all seemingly shut their doors. Medical schools in the West began relying on model skeletons for their anatomy instruction needs.

What no one knew was that at least one company was still exporting human bones. They had rekindled factories across West Bengal and had clients all over the world.

The most active bone exporter is Young Brothers. It's a medical supply company that sits between one of Calcutta's most active morgues and its largest cemetery. In 2001 neighbors complained that the warehouse stank like the dead. Some people reported seeing bones drying on the roof. When the health department chief Javed Ahmed Khan heard the reports he raided the facility and found bones boiling away in cauldrons and export invoices for orders all over the world. It was proof that the business was violating the export ban. But when Khan took the case to the police the owner of Young Brothers, Vinesh Aron, only spent one night in jail. The case was thrown own over a jurisdictional dispute and the business given a subtle nod that it could continue.

Since then Young Brothers has been more discreet about its business affairs, but it hasn't exactly shuttered his doors. In October I met Aron's in law in yet another medical supply company in Chennai. He told me that Vinesh Aron is the only man in the family with "guts". To prove it he pulled a fetal skull off the shelf and offered to sell it to me for $400.

In the meanwhile bones are still being smuggled though illegal channels in Singapore and Paris. I found a reseller in Canada who says that he still sells Indian bones across North America.

For more about the global trade in human bones check out this month's issue of WIRED magazine in a story called "Inside India's Underground Trade in Human Remains". I have also produced a shorter radio segment for NPR titled "Into the Heart of India's Underground Bone Trade".

For more photos of the bone cache check out these two galleries: mine and NPR's

Dadua Slain. Is Banditry on the Wane?

The only known picture of Dadua

I did a short interview for NPR yesterday on the last stand of the feared bandit Dadua in Uttar Pradesh last week. Special forces surrounded the dacoits position and lobbed grenades at him and ten of his armed colleagues.

I'm interested in doing some more research on banditry in India. Unlike the various revolutionary movements across South Asia, there is something romantic--if unnerving--about the dozen or royal dacoits who have spend decades resisting the government. Unlike the Naxals men like Dadua, Veerapam, and Man Singh didn't have grandiose political aims, but were unwilling to live by conventional morality. It almost that the most powerful dacoits in India are the inheritors of India's long dead feudal traditions.

Dadua survived in the ravines and jungles of Uttar Pradesh for so long because he fashioned himself as a patron of the rural downtrodden. He got the vote out for political parties, and paid dowry money for families who could not afford to get their daughters married off. He was half-magnanimous monarch and half cold blooded killer with over 150 murder cases attributed to him by the police.

Man Singh, the notorious bandit king who was gunned down in a similar manner by the police in the 1950's, has risen to god like status in Madya Pradesh. Today a score of temples in rural areas include his bust along with the pantheon of Hindu gods. Even 60 years after his death local people see him as a benefactor.

Yet the central government seems to be stepping up operations against bandits and I wonder if soon there won't be any place for these sorts of figured in India's IT future.

I'd like to find out more about Dadua. Perhaps I'll take a trip up to UP and visit the temple he consecrated.

Listen to the NPR story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12255575

Bones behind the Morgue

I've been in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for the last week and a half doing research on a book. You are going to have to wait a little before I give you the plot summary, but suffice it to say that I'm hanging out in a lot of morgues and Buddhist temples. I've also been hijacked by the New York Times and National Geographic (television) to work on a couple stories so I haven't had a lot of time to post. Until now.

I have a single tantalizing find that I came across while snooping around behind the postmortem lab at the Gaya Medical College. Around the area there are hundreds of scraps of clothing that the doctors removed from their patients during autopsies and I wondered if perhaps there were other relics of their patients lying about. Directly to the rear of the lab I came across an open-pit well that had been partially sealed, but had a hole cut into the top for people to throw things in. I took a peek inside and saw the remains of at least one human body and articles of clothing from several people. I have no doubt that if I rooted around I would have found dozens of corpses. This immediately brought to my mind the Ratlam fetal bones incident a month ago where the remains of up to 80 infants were discovered behind a hospital mortuary.

I am not sure what the laws are pertaining to disposal of human remains in India, but I am fairly sure that the only people who are discarded like scraps of clothing behind a hospital would be powerless villagers and low-caste people who have no one to advocate for their rights. I told a dalit activist I know in Varanasii about it and he said he was going to look into the incident.

What this also leads me to believe is that discarded human remains are probably a lot more common than one would think behind hospitals in India. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you poked around your local government hospital long enough you would have a good chance of seeing similar things.

Photos: The first image is the front door of the postmortem lab at the Gaya Medical College in Gaya, Bihar. The second image is a bit difficult to decipher but if you click on it and blow it up you can clearly see what I believe to be a femur and part of a human pelvis that I found in behind the lab in an open well.

Suspect Surgeons Advise Tamil Nadu Organ Transplant Future; Get Government Nod

Health Minister KKSSR Ramachandran

This afternoon I attended a meeting held by the government of Tamil Nadu that was meant to be the beginning of an official response to the kidney racket. In the last thirteen years thousands of kidney have been sold on the black market with the tacit approval of the ethics board that is charged with monitoring organ transplants. A month ago I wrote a story for Wired News where a member of the ethics committee admitted to knowingly authorizing illegal transplants through brokers.

The meeting today was meant to be a step forward out of a ethical murkiness of organ transplants and call together a wide array of doctors, NGO-wallas and ethical savants for their opinions on live-donor transplants and the solutions that might lie ahead. But intentions are not everything.

"The kidney rackets have been operating in this community for a long time. . .90% of the donors we know about come from below the poverty line, and 90% of those donate for money," said V.K. Subburaj Deputy Secretary of Health and Family Welfare during his inaugural address.

From a statement like that it would follow that the attendees charged with formulating Tamil Nadu's future policy would decide to get tough on organ donations and look for positive solutions through cadavers.

Yet when K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, the minister of health, asked for people to introduce themselves from the audience, it soon became apparent that the agenda for the meeting was actually being set by the kidney brokers. Just about all of the doctors who came are currently under investigation by the police for assisting in illegal kidney transplants. Representatives from hospitals in Madurai, Coiambatore, Chennai and Trichy that have all been outed in the media for working closely with brokers sat self-satisfied in their easy chairs waiting for their chance to influence policy.

The most obvious among them was Dr. K.C. Reddy of Devaki Hospital--who allowed a broker named Dhanalakshmi to operate for years outside his hospital and in the past has been a vocal proponent of live-donor donations. He was practically jovial. Though he wouldn't say a word to me.

When the opening remarks were over the press was kicked out and the doctors began to discuss their recommendations in private.

It was like putting the inmates in charge of the prison. The very people who were implicated in creating the organ racket in the first place were allowed to chart the course for the future. Allowed to set the clock backwards and make it seem like all their illegal actions over the last dozen years were actually for the best.

So it was no shock when the results came in and the doctors had reached a consensus that 1) Live unrelated donor transplants should be legal and that people should be allowed to buy and sell kidneys on the market. 2) Foreigners should be allowed to buy organs in India, but need to seek approval from the committee 3) All of the committee's authorization decisions should be final and not open to appeal 4) Members of the ethics board in charge of overseeing that the system is not abused cannot be held accountable for coercion between brokers over donors or forged documents. And, to put it in the speakers own words, "should not be harassed by the police or press".

So lets just throw transparency out the window and start an open-air-organ bazaar in Nungabakkam why don't we. If the committee's statements get taken up by the government (which is a real possibility) then we can look forward to thousands of completely above the board organ thefts. There were no stipulations to properly look after the rights of the people donating kidneys (except for one proposal for 5-10 years of free health insurance) and no mention of brokers at all.

But some people, thankfully, were not completely taken in by the committee's organ mafia. V.K. Subburaj said that there was still need for further debate, and that cadaver donations were still the only real option. The same went for members of the MOHAN Foundation, who have organized 200 cadaver donations in the last three years.

To top it off, no people from the press were permitted to ask questions or attend the closed door sessions with the gang of doctor-criminals discussing how to divide the spoils if the laws change.

At this point it is in the hands of K.K.S.S.R Ramachandran ,the health minister, a DMK appointee who's claim to the ministerhood seems to rely on his loyalty to the party and an incident in his past when he was burned by acid during a political rally. I don't know much about Ramachandran except that he has endorsed cadaver programs in the past and that he doesn't speak much English. Though one quote that he said during the meeting (which was translated for me) ran a chill though my veins:

"If there was a situation today where I needed a kidney I am sure that my son wouldn't offer up his own, instead he would say that he would pay any price for one."

And the price today is the blood of the poor.

Before he left a reporter from the Hindu asked if he would prosecute hospitals that had preformed illegal transplants. He said he would when the investigation turned up evidence. So far, it seems, he hasn't looked very hard.

Foetal Bones in Ratlam Probably Not Foetal

Newspaper and TV reports around India are reporting that 400 bones found in a pit behind a hospital in Ratlam are probably the remains of aborted fetuses. Yet the photos of the bones seem to indicate that the bones that were recovered came from children or full-grown adults--further clouding the mystery. Is this a case of infanticide, murder, or just clumsy disposal of human remains. Take a look at the bones that the man in the red shirt is holding. I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but it looks like the big one in the middle either came from the world's largest fetus, or is an adult tibia.

RATLAM, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Local authorities following a tip have found bones and skeletal remains of newborn babies and fetuses at a hospital in the Indian city of Ratlam. Experts identified up to four fetuses among the remains found Saturday at Christian Hospital in Ratlam, prompting discussions of possible abortions taking place, the Press Trust of India said. "The thickness of skulls and bones indicates that the remains were of around three to four neonates or fetuses," district Vaccination Officer RG Kaushal said.

And look at these photos. The bones in the picture look pretty well formed, not the mostly-cartilidge stuff that infants are made out of for a a few months before their bodies begin to harden. Either the on-site anthropologist forgot forensics 101, or he didn't actually take any time to look at the remains.