Three years ago, Laxmi (name changed to protect identity), 28, decided to sell her eggs. She worked part-time as a waiter in Mumbai, about 60 km from her home in Badlapur, but was unable to make ends meet. “I was desperate for work and money,” she says. Each job offered only between ₹250 and ₹300 per day.
Laxmi says she left her husband to start a new life after he started living with another woman with whom he had a child. “We were married for eight years. It was an inter-caste marriage. My husband’s family pressured him to marry someone from their caste,” she adds.
While her husband was from the Agri community, a sub-caste of the fishing people, Laxmi was a Mahar, listed as a Scheduled Caste.
“I wasn’t able to earn enough money to rent a house and live on my own,” she says, adding that she was forced to stay with friends for a year.
During that year, she met Sulochana Gadekar, 44, on a train to Mumbai for work. She told Laxmi she could make some “quick money” donating eggs. “She told me to look at it as a social service for women who couldn’t have children of their own. She said it was common practice in IVF (in-vitro fertilization) centers.”
Laxmi, like many women, had seen the advice of IVF centers and did not consider it illegal. In India, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 allows egg donation only once in a lifetime by a woman who has given birth to a child. Prohibits commercialization and provides health insurance for donors.
Gadekar offered Laxmi accommodation at her house in Vangani, about 25 km from Badlapur. She was relieved to have rent-free housing and the prospect of cash. She was paid ₹15,000 for the first cycle, which was held at Gadekar’s house.
After a month, Laxmi moved out and found her own rented accommodation in Vangani, a 1RK (room and kitchen) unit and decided to undergo the egg donation process again.
“I cycled eight times. Each cycle lasted about a month,” she says. For these, she remembers going to Nashik and Thane and getting paid between ₹12,000 and ₹25,000.
She says she eventually had to stop donating eggs when she was diagnosed with a thyroid problem. Six months ago she had a problem with her pelvis. “I feel that my health complications are related to multiple egg donations,” she says.
Laxmi returned to her job as a gig worker in the catering industry. In her sparse home, she sits on an aging wooden sofa with an exposed sponge and says: “I would donate my eggs again if I could. I still need the money.” The only time she cries is when she talks about her husband.
On February 18 this year, Gadekar was arrested. According to the Maharashtra police, it is part of an interstate network of clinics, pharmacies and egg collection agents, all operating illegally. Since then, police have arrested six more. Two other main accused are also agents: Ashwini Rupesh Chabukswar (29) and Manjusha Wankhede (46).
The other accused in the first information report registered at the Badlapur (East) police station are Sonal Gurudev Garewal, 24, who allegedly operated the sonography machine without formal training at Bhagwan Hospital in Ulhasnagar; Dr. Amol Patil, director of Malti IVF Center in Nashik; and Sumit Bhagwan Sonkamble, 38, a pharmacist allegedly involved in arranging logistics and documentation. Also arrested was Satish Dilip Choudhary, an electrician who allegedly worked with Patil.
The apartment belonging to the accused Sulochana Gadekar, where the police raided and seized several vials of hormone injections. | Photo credit: Emmanual Yogini
Police are investigating the role of Rajesh Jammu Nehlani (47), owner of Bhagwan Hospital, and are examining documents and medical records seized during searches at several hospitals. According to the police, Malti IVF Center was licensed to operate in Nashik, but its branch in Thane was operating without permission.
The IVF market, a subset of the healthcare industry, was valued at $883.50 million in 2022, according to Allied Market Research, a market research, consulting and advisory firm. It is estimated to cross $4667.80 million by 2032.
Laxmi is one of 10 women identified as victims of the alleged IVF scam.
Modus operandi
Three days before Gadekar’s arrest, a woman walked into a government health center in Badlapur East. She told the doctor on duty that she had not been paid for the eggs she had donated. The woman assumed the government was paying for the egg donation because Gadekar had told them it was part of the welfare allowance.
The doctor recorded her complaint and Gadekar’s name and alerted the police.
Investigators raided Gadekar’s residence on the 13th floor of a gated estate in Joveli Gaon on the outskirts of Badlapur and recovered several vials of hormone injections worth around ₹8 lakh.
According to police, agents would approach women who were in financial distress. They would offer amounts between ₹18,000 and ₹30,000 to potential donors. Women producing more than five eggs were promised more money. Gadekar hid them in his residence for 10 to 12 days and administered hormone injections to them daily.
These injections are meant to stimulate the ovaries to produce more eggs in one cycle, doctors say. The egg extraction was done without medical consultation, police say.
Several teams are investigating the case, Deputy Commissioner of Police Sachin Gore, Ulhasnagar Police, said at a recent press conference. “Preliminary investigation has revealed that the three main arrested accused were in direct contact with IVF centers. Inter-state links, financial trail and involvement of doctors are being probed,” he said.
Digital evidence recovered from the mobile phones seized from the accused indicated that the donors were being transported to various locations. Investigators say data shows that after receiving hormone injections at transit points, the women were taken to health facilities in the Karnataka 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 Choudhary.
“We are following 30 to 35 agents and trying to find the recipient of the harvested eggs,” says the officer.
Building and destroying lives
With Gadekar in jail, her second husband lives alone in a 500-600 sq ft house they moved into in January this year in Joveli Gaon, which is almost treeless. The 16-story apartment building stands next to the highway and close to an industrial area. A house here costs around ₹50 lakh.
He says he has cirrhosis of the liver and that Gadekar was the “main income”. He adds that he lost his job as a watch repairer in Mumbai after his employers learned of his wife’s arrest.
“Twenty years ago, after we got married, I realized she was an egg donor and a surrogate mother. She soon became an agent. There were offers from doctors to find other women to donate eggs,” she says.
When police raided the home, they didn’t serve a search warrant or an arrest warrant, he says. “Everything happened after 9:30 at night. The search continued until 11. They took her to the police station and only then produced an arrest warrant,” he says.
He points to a wooden cabinet and says they just had it made but the police broke it. The hormone injections were obtained from there, he adds. “I have no money now, so I’m not sure how I’m going to survive. The only one who made money was Sulochana. Now I have to try to get bail for her.”
Health professionals drew attention to the health risks associated with repeated and uncontrolled egg donation. “Donor women are given injections of menotropins (hormone injections that were obtained from Gadekar’s house). If a high dose is given several times in a lifetime to induce repeated ovulation, the risk of ovarian cancer increases,” says Dr Sainath Bairagi, a Kalyan-based obstetrician-gynaecologist, explaining the complications caused by drugs used in such procedures.
He adds that immediate side effects can be life-threatening. “It causes ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. This can lead to fluid build-up in the body. It’s a life-threatening situation. No one should donate eggs repeatedly.”
Far from Badlapur
Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Chitra Wagh, who raised the matter in the Legislative Council, alleged that some women were forced to donate eggs up to 10 times. Deputy Speaker Neelam Gorhe then directed Home Secretary (Urban) Yogesh Kadam to cancel the licenses of the doctors allegedly involved in the scam.
Health Minister Prakash Abitkar assured the Legislative Assembly that an inquiry would be conducted and warned that action would be taken against the culprits.
Maharashtra has 860 IVF centers, according to government data. The health minister said these centers would be connected to a centralized monitoring system, but did not specify a timetable. Joint inspections by the home and health ministries will be conducted through committees comprising the director general of police and the civil surgeon, he added.
The state government has said it may invoke the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act, 1999 if the investigation uncovers a larger criminal conspiracy. This law states that if convicted, a person can be punished with up to life in prison.
Rupali Chakankar, who resigned as chairperson of the State Commission for Women on March 20, visited Badlapur on March 5 to review the case. She met with police officials, a government health center doctor who alerted the police to the illegal network, and the mayor of the local council.
Addressing reporters, she said, “Though illegal egg extraction took place in Badlapur, its roots have spread across the state. From today, a crackdown will begin against illegal IVF and sonography centers in and around Badlapur. We will dig up the roots of this network.”
Chakankar resigned from her position due to her alleged association with a self-proclaimed rich man who was arrested for allegedly exploiting hundreds of women in Nashik district.
Meanwhile, the woman who first approached a doctor in Badlapur East over money allegedly owed to her for repeated egg retrievals has not contacted investigators again either. Police say she left her home and may have run away.
chinmay.r@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
