Six individuals living in Bengaluru were arrested in connection with an online kidney sales racket. The accused, including three African nationals, had been running the online racket by using the names of prominent doctors in the city. They were arrested by Banaswadi police on Saturday.
According to reports, the gang approached individuals who were looking for an organ donor for a kidney transplant, as well as those who were willing to be donors in exchange for money. They would then collect registration fees from these individuals, which would amount to anywhere from Rs 40,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh.
After receiving the token amount, the gang would cut off all communication with the individuals.The gang has reportedly swindled around 260 individuals using the same modus operandi.
They had created a fake website which falsely claimed that they had the authorisation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to run the business and had been using the name of a super specialty hospital in the city and the names of several well-known and reputed doctors.
Police tracked down the accused after a complaint was filed by Dr Shafiq MM, director of the hospital. Following this, police were able to use the numbers the gang had published on their website to track down the culprits.
The accused have been identified as Esene Lovely (29) from Nigeria, who was reportedly the “kingpin”, Mohamed Ahmed Ismail (24) and Marwan Faisal (27) who are both from Sudan, Herendra (25) and Jatin Kumar (25) from Tripura and Kami Ranjan (21) who is from Bengaluru’s Bommanahalli area.
Several illegal kidney trafficking rackets have been identified and busted in the recent past. Last July, officials from Hyderabad had busted members of a kidney racket which functioned by contacting individuals who were selling their kidneys and duped them of lakhs of rupees.