Trafficked Bodies, Stolen Lives: The Medico- Legal Politics of Organ Trade in Benyamin’s Body and Blood

Abstract

The paper critically examines Benyamin’s medico-thriller novel, Body and Blood (2020) to expose the malpractice of organ trafficking in India. Initially published in Malayalam as Sareera Shastram (2017), and translated into English by Swarup B.R., the novel offers a realistic account of the illegal harvesting and trade of human organs under the camouflage of organ donation to the needy population. The story revolves around vulnerable youngsters and the polemics of their exposure to deliberately brandished accidents. These accidents subsequently follow a nebulous series of reiterative actions that comprise pharmaceutically injected coma in the injured youths, non-permissive extraction of healthy organs for unlicensed trade to accomplish megalomaniac aspirations of religious mafias, and eventually leading to inevitable deaths of innocent victims. Using interdisciplinary methodology, the article contributes to the eye-opening revelation about the new-age churches and their pretentious strategies to attract the young to operate the heinous medical crime of organ trafficking in the nation-state.