Dealers paid doctors to remove student's kidney

Five men, including two doctors, have gone on trial in Chenzhou, Hunan, charged with intentional injury after they harvested a kidney from a high school student who sold it to buy an iPad and an iPhone.

The student's family is also demanding 2.27 million yuan (HK$2.78 million) in compensation from the defendants for serious damage to his health.

He is now classified as disabled.

The student started to search online for organ dealers after his parents broke his computer in a desperate attempt to end his addiction to online video games, jcrb.com, a news portal administered by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, reported.

His mother said his original plan was not to buy an iPad and an iPhone, but devices that would allow him to continue playing online games. She said he later decided to use the money to buy the Apple appliances because he did not know what to do with the money.

The jcrb.com report said organ dealer He Wei, who became involved in the trade to pay off debts, offered payment of 25,000 yuan. Yin Shen, who had sold one of his own kidneys before and who contacted the student online, recommended the student as a donor.

Through another dealer, Tang Shimin, He rented an operating theatre in Chenzhou's No 198 Hospital, a military facility, in April from Su Kaizong, chief of the hospital's urology department. Su supplied an anaesthesia machine and was paid 60,000 yuan for each operation held there.