Five doctors of L H Hiranandani Hospital, including chief executive officer Sujit Chatterjee and medical director Anurag Naik, were arrested on Tuesday evening for alleged involvement in the kidney transplant racket unearthed at the trust-run facility on July 14. This may be the first time that senior doctors at a large institute in the city have been arrested for unethical medical practices.

With these arrests, the police have so far taken into custody 14 people, including a kidney failure patient and his 'fake wife', to date. Of these 14, six are associated with the hospital, including a medical social worker, Nilesh Kamble.

The Mumbai police and Maharashtra’s health department said they had also identified two other kidney sale cases involving the Powai hospital, and are investigating those separately.

Last month, the police were tipped off that an illegal kidney transplants were being done at Hiranandani Hospital; in many cases donors and recipients were not related and the operations were performed based on fake documentation.

Police then started investigating and found that many from the hospital were involved in the racket. Following the investigation, nine people were arrested in July.

The police arrested these doctors under 12 sections of the IPC and the Transplantation of Human Organs Act.

A chronic shortage of organs available for transplant fuels a booming black market trade in the body parts in the country.

Millions of Indians suffer from kidney disease, mostly because of high rates of diabetes, hiking demand for transplants annually.