The parents of an young girl who died tragically while vacationing in India fear that she may have been the victim of illegal organ trading after her body was returned home to the U.K. missing her internal organs, ABC News reported.
Gurkiren Kaur, 8, was being treated for a mild case of dehydration in a hospital in India's Punjab region, and died moments after a doctor gave her an injection, according to her family. At the time the girl was visiting her family overseas in her first vacation outside of the country, when she became mildly ill on April 2.
Her parents say that after being given an injection at the clinic, "her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she quickly became unresponsive," and that the clinic's doctor refused to tell them what had been inside the injection.
"I said, 'What is the injection for? She doesn't need an injection she just needs a saline drip for half an hour or 45 minutes,'" her mother, Amrit, said to ITV News. "He didn't answer me at all he just gave me a blank look and totally ignored me and just inserted the needle into a syringe and as soon as he pushed it in her neck flipped backwards. Her eyes rolled over and she turned a grayish-whitish color. She just blinked twice and her mouth was left open."
Her mother, Amrit, and father, Santokh, took her to the hospital where doctors promised to perform only a biopsy in order to determine a cause of death, in accordance with Indian requirements. However, when Gurkiren's body was returned home to the U.K., a British coroner called her parents to inform them that all of her internal organs were missing, which were necessary to determine the cause of death. In Britain, it is common practice for an autopsy to be carried out in U.K. on citizens who die overseas.
A member of parliament in the girl's home city of Birmingham, England, has demanded an international investigation into the case, as Gurkiren's grief-stricken family believes she may have been a victim of an illegal organ trade, her organs removed for the sale.
Despite a1994 ban, the commercial trade of human organs remains a big business in India, according to the Birmingham Mail newspaper, which first reported the story.
Shabana Mahmood, a lawmaker with the opposition Labour Party, said to ITV News that she had raised the "deeply suspicious circumstances" of the case with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
A friend of Gurkiren's family and local politician said that in this case there were "many unanswered questions," suggesting it was "very possible" that the little girl was killed deliberately for her organs. Attempts to investigate the case have been frustrated by Indian authorities, as Gurkiren's parents allege that the clinic claim they lost medical records of the incident.
"We can confirm the death of a British national in Punjab, India, on April 2," Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement. "We are providing consular assistance in the case and cannot comment further."
"I knew my innocent child had been murdered," Amrit said to the Birmingham Mail. "She was a very happy, very bubbly baby. She was the light of our house, the light of my life."
Gurkiren's body was cremated, but how she died and where her organs are and why they were taken still remains a mystery.
