‘Agent’ who promised woman from Borivli Rs35L for donation arrested

Mumbai: Police on Friday arrested a sand-seller for duping a 23-year-old woman from Borivli, promising her Rs 35 lakh for her kidney a month ago, after she found a fake kidney donation portal created by him. Sandeep Landge, 29, got her to give him Rs 44,000 for registration and medical test fees.
He posed as an agent after he got in touch with her immediately after she submitted an online registration form for the donation.Landge was tracked down with the help of the Internet Protocol (IP) address, bank details and call which was recorded.
Borivli police registered the complaint on August 23 and started the probe only after the victim, a Commerce graduate, consumed poison on August 19 when the offer did not proceed and her creditors began hounding her. She was treated at the clinic where she worked and is now recuperating at home.
Landge, a school dropout, hails from Ahmednagar. “A probe is on to find out who helped Landge create the fake donation portal and the number of victims he duped,” Mumbai Police spokesperson, DCP Ashok Dudhe, told TOI.
The victim, whose father is an auto driver, found the portal in July, when she was seeking details on the after-effects of a kidney transplant. The victim said in her complaint, “I created a log-in with my name, number and email address. Soon, I received a call from a person, who identified himself as Santosh Landge. I was offered Rs 35 lakh, of which Rs 2 lakh would be deducted as the agent’s commission, if I donated a kidney. I wanted to improve the standard of living of my family of six. But I had to pay Rs 80,000 for registration and medical test fees.”
She added, “Landge again got me to deposit Rs 20,000 on August 14, claiming that within 30 minutes, Rs 17.5 lakh would be deposited in my account as advance payment for the kidney donation.”
She initially deposited Rs 4,000 in Landge’s account, then Rs 19,900, till she ended up borrowing Rs 44,000. Each time she deposited money in his account, his phone would be unreachable for sometime. He hounded her to pay up more through text and WhatsApp messages. “She did not inform anyone at home and collected the money from friends and acquaintances. Whenever she sought a meeting with him, he said he was with kidney recipients outside Mumbai. At one point, he told her a Parsi lady would receive her kidney and pay her handsomely,” Dudhe said.
The accused, on the pretext of getting the victim medically examined for being eligible as a donor, got her to deposit Rs 44,000 into an account, he added. “He was traced to a village in Ahmednagar and confessed to the crime after he was arrested and brought here. The Borivli metropolitan magistrate’s court remanded the accused to police custody till August 30,” he said.