Hyderabad police in India on Saturday claimed to have busted a kidney racket, with the arrest of a youth who cheated a family after collecting INR 3.4 million from them for arranging a kidney transplant surgery in Sri Lanka or Turkey.

Police arrested 25-year-old D. S. Pavan Srinivas, a native of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and a resident of Hyderabad, who himself had reportedly donated a kidney and after realizing the huge money potential, started arranging kidney donors.

Foreign media reported that the accused, an MBA graduate, facilitated around nine kidney transplants.

For each transplant, the accused used to earn a commission of around INR 600,000.

The Banjara Hills police had registered a case of cheating and criminal breach of trust against Pavan in June last year on a complaint by a family which had paid him INR 3.4 million towards the cost of a kidney transplant surgery, accommodation and payment to a kidney donor.

The police said that after collecting the money, the accused had cut off contacts with the family and was missing.

Bijjala Bharathi had lodged a complaint with Banjara Hills police station that she and her family came in contact with Srinivas at a hospital in the city, where her husband, a dialysis patient, was undergoing treatment. He promised them to provide a donor and get the transplantation done through his known sources in Sri Lanka or Turkey, for which he collected the money.

The police investigation reportedly revealed that the accused spent the amount lavishly in casino games in Sri Lanka, and cheated the family by not arranging the donor and transplant.

The probe also revealed that after incurring loss in the stock market, the accused went to Sri Lanka in 2013 where he sold his kidney to get money and developed contacts with some doctors. In order to earn easy money, he hatched a plan to work as an agent to provide donors for needy patients. He started to lure poor people through social media and made them ready to donate their kidneys for money.

He used to get the kidney transplants done through his contacts in some hospitals in Sri Lanka and Turkey.

Pavan was reportedly involved in three cases registered in the two Telugu states. He had also spent nearly one and half years in jail in Sri Lanka for overstaying.

-Agencies