Blood For Sale: NDTV's Operation Blood Exposes Black Market Outside Hospitals

In an exclusive investigation, Operation Blood, NDTV uncovered a chilling truth: a black market for blood is flourishing outside some of Madhya Pradesh's top government hospitals.

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Read Time: 3 mins
NDTV went in as undercover patients
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Summary is AI-generated, newsroom-reviewed
  • Blood is being sold illegally near top government hospitals in Madhya Pradesh
  • No medical verification or ID is required to buy blood in this black market
  • Auto drivers, security guards, and hospital staff act as brokers for blood sales
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Bhopal:

Blood, the lifeline that saves millions every day, is being sold here, not donated, not prescribed, but priced, packaged, and pushed into the hands of desperate families. In an exclusive investigation, Operation Blood, NDTV uncovered a chilling truth: a black market for blood is flourishing outside some of Madhya Pradesh's top government hospitals.

No questions about the relation. No questions about the religion. Only one question: "How much blood do you need - and how much can you pay?"

This investigation, which will be followed by an exclusive sting operation, is not a charge sheet against doctors or hospitals. It's a mirror held up to the shadow network that exists just outside their gates - a network where auto drivers, security guards, parking attendants, and even pharmacy staff lead to one name again and again: Anees Bhai.

Who is Anees Bhai? And how can this illegal blood trade exist just metres from institutions like Hamidia Hospital, AIIMS Bhopal, Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital, JP Hospital, Navodaya Cancer Hospital and over half a dozen blood banks?

NDTV went in as undercover patients, their relatives carrying fake and incomplete prescriptions and found out that blood was offered without medical verification or ID.

Ambulance drivers and parking lot workers casually connected us to "suppliers." 

Entire unofficial donor-broker networks operate just outside hospital premises. Several blood banks agreed to sell blood on dummy prescriptions - some even offering "discounts."

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And this is not a one-off incident. This network stretches across hospitals, from Hamidia Hospital to JP Hospital to AIIMS. A system running so efficiently that it feels almost institutional.

Outside Navodaya Cancer Hospital, where families arrive with their last hope, we were offered blood with zero checks. A few names came up repeatedly.

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At JP Hospital, we didn't need to step inside. From the parking area itself, a line of contacts and brokers emerged, ready to arrange blood. No slip. No diagnosis. Just the right amount of cash.

This is not a crime of silence - it is a business of neglect. A parallel blood economy is thriving under the nose of the state's healthcare system. 

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This is not an indictment of doctors or hospitals, but a question: when something as sacred as blood is being sold like a commodity in open daylight, what is the system doing?

This is not the final part of Operation Blood - it is only the biggest mirror yet.

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