28-year-old Rita Sarkar’s husband frequently complained about her family’s failure to pay her dowry after their wedding, but she never imagined he would go as far as stealing one of her kidneys to make up for the unpaid dowry. She was wrong.
The young woman recently told reporters that she had been the victim of domestic abuse from her husband and his family over her unpaid dowry for many years. She had gotten used to it, but what Rita didn’t know was that her husband, Biswajit Sarkar, would stop at nothing to get his hands on the money he felt he was owned. So when an opportunity to steal one of his wife’s kidneys presented itself, the man did not hesitate.
Photo: Hindustan Times
“Around two years ago, I began suffering from acute stomach ache. My husband took me to a private nursing home in Kolkata, where he and the medical staff told me that I would be fine after removing my inflamed appendix through surgery,” Rita Sarkar told the Hindustan Times newspaper.
The operation went well, but Rita began to feel that something was wrong when Biswajit told her that she was to talk to no one about it. Soon after returning home, Rita began experiencing sharp pain in her lower back, but despite begging her husband to take her to a doctor, he flat-out refused. Instead, he kept her in the house, away from her family and friends until she recovered on her own.
The truth about Biswajit’s bizarre behavior after Rita’s appendectomy finally came to light three months ago, when relatives on her father’s side finally took her to a medical center. There, an ultrasound revealed that the woman’s right kidney was missing.
“I was shattered,” Sarkar told the Hindustan Times. “I then understood why my husband implored me to keep quiet about the surgery. He sold my kidney because my family couldn’t meet his demand for dowry.”
Photo: The Skyline View/Flickr
According to Rita’s father, she and Biswajit married in 2005, and at the time, her family have the groom’s gold, silver and 180,000 Indian rupees ($2,800) in cash, but they always kept asking for more.
“He used to say ‘your father has so many cars, he’s sitting there with so much wealth, look at us, we have nothing,’” Rita’s father told the Washington Post.
Last Friday, Rita Sarkar filed a complaint with West Bengal police, and both Bisjawit and his brother Shyamal Sarkar were arrested and charged with commercially trading human organs and detaining a woman with criminal intent.
During his interrogation, Bisjawit Sarkar admitted to selling his wife’s kidney to a buyer in another state, but claims that it was all legal, as Rita even signed a consent letter. The 28-year-old woman denies this, claiming that she must have been drugged because she doesn’t remember signing any document giving up one of her kidneys.
“Before going to the doctor in Kolkata, we had put up at a relative’s house. I was given soft drink at the home, after which I felt drowsy,” Rita told the Indian Telegraph. “I knew nothing about this. I was definitely drugged and don’t remember signing any paper.”
The 28-year-old woman is currently very sick, as after the secret removal of her right kidney, her left one became infected. She is now under treatment to ensure that her kidney functions normally.
The husband’s alleged crime is even crueler considering he and Rita have an 11-year-old son together. Putting his greed above the risk of killing his son’s mother is about as low as a husband can go.
