MUMBAI, July 19 -- Unable to make ends meet in the city, a 45-year-old householder decided to sell his kidney, and got duped. Prashant Praful Nagvekar lives with his family that comprises his wife, son, mother and one brother, in a tiny flat in a slum rehabilitation building at Dahisar (East). While his brother does odd jobs and contributes to the household expenses, Nagvekar is the main provider. For the last 10 years he has been working as an office boy at Indocity Infotech Ltd in Andheri East and where he gets Rs.15,000 in hand. Of this, Rs.10,000 goes towards the rent every month. Nagvekar, over the years, began to realise the extent of his financial precarity. His 10-year-old son needed to go to a good school, be fed, and clothed properly. Nagvekar also wanted to buy a house hoping it will save him the monthly rent. A loan was not an option-he had seen people around him get trapped in long-term loans. He asked around, spoke to people, and figured that selling an organ might get him a windfall and end all his financial troubles. For a year, he told HT, he mulled over it, asked around how he might sell an organ and reached the dark web. He found that kidneys could be sold at a hospital in New Delhi and contacted the mobile number given in the advertisement. "I dialled the number and I told them that I wanted to sell one of my kidneys. They took my mobile number and some preliminary information about me and said they would call back," said the 45-year-old who did not disclose his plans to anyone in his family. On June 16, 2025, Nagvekar received a WhatsApp call on his mobile from an unknown mobile number while he was at his company's Borivali office. The man at the other end of the line told him that he was calling in response to his query about selling his kidney and asked for his name, address, blood group, and age. The caller then told him that Nagvekar would get Rs.1 crore for one of his kidneys, but before that he would have to deposit an amount of Rs.2.95 lakh for getting various pre-operation tests which the buyer would organise for him. When Nagvekar expressed his inability to pay such a large sum, they told him to pay in small instalments and provided him three different accounts in which to deposit the money. Desperate to get that Rs.1 crore Nagvikar, who never wanted to take a loan, took personal loans from online loan apps and deposited Rs.2.95 lakh in the account numbers given to him. After confirming the money had been received, the anonymous callers told him that he would have to pay another Rs.1.30 lakh. That was the first hint Nagvekar had of something amiss and he refused to pay but subsequently each time he tried to call the number it remained unavailable. A few days later the loan sharks began to call for recovery. "They threatened that if I did not pay, they will call all my relatives and send them obscene photographs of me and my family," he said. Nagvekar said he felt utterly helpless and fell into deep depression. "I knew there was no way out except going to the police." On Thursday, he approached Dahisar police and filed an FIR. "We have registered an FIR against unknown frauds and are tracing the account transactions and mobile number through which he had received the calls though he has come to us very late," said a police officer from Dahisar police station. Ashok Honmane, senior police inspector of Dahisar police station, said that the complainant was desperate and unaware that selling organs is a crime. "He could have been booked had he sold his kidney," said Honmane....