A gang that performs surgeries on fingertips to beat fingerprint scanners at the Kuwait airport and facilitates the re-entry of those who were deported was busted, Rachakonda Police said.
According to the police, the accused are Gajjalakondugari Naga Muneshwar Reddy (36), who works as a radiology and X-Ray technician and Sagabala Venkat Ramana (39), an anaesthesia technician. The other two accused are construction workers Bovilla Shiva Shankar Reddy (25) and Rendla Rama Krishna Reddy (38), who got the surgery done. All the accused are from YSR Kadapa district in Andhra Pradesh.
“Due to expiry of visa or for violating visa conditions, some people are deported from Kuwait. The accused used to perform fingertip surgeries on such people. They then gave them a new address and identity and got them visas to go to Kuwait again. We have busted this gang,” Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh M Bhagwat said.
Police said that while Muneshwar Reddy and Ramana were working at a diagnostic centre in Tirupati, they happened to meet a person who told that he was deported from Kuwait, but after getting a fingertip surgery done in Sri Lanka, he managed to enter the West Asian country.
Muneshwar Reddy then allegedly planned to make more money. He and Ramana got in touch with a friend living in Kuwait who shared information about a person living in Rajasthan who wished to get a fingertip surgery done. The duo allegedly went there and performed the surgery on two persons for ₹ 25,000. In May this year, a person from Kerala contacted Muneshwar Reddy and the duo allegedly performed the surgery on six persons and charged ₹ 1.50 lakh. Three others were operated upon in their own village, police said.
The duo would cut the upper layer of the fingertip, remove a part of the tissue and stitch it using a medical kit comprising items like local anaesthesia, surgical blades, and lignocaine hydrochloride injections. Police said that once the surgery is done, the wound heals, leaving a slight change in fingerprint patterns.
