A farmer from Maharashtra was forced to travel to Cambodia and sell his kidney as a Rs 1 lakh loan and the Rs 10,000 per day interest caused his debt to balloon to Rs 74 lakh.
Roshan Sadashiv Kude, a farmer from the Chandrapur district, was seeing continuous losses in farming and decided to start a dairy business. He took a cumulative loan of Rs 1 lakh from several moneylenders.
Even before the dairy business could take off, the cows he had purchased died and the crops on the land he owned failed. The debt trap began to tighten and moneylenders began harrassing Kude and his family.
The farmer then sold his land, tractor and valuable household items to pay off the debt, but that was not enough. When the debt still remained, one of the moneylenders advised Kude to sell his kidney. Through an agent, he went to Kolkata, underwent tests and then went to Cambodia, where his kidney was removed and sold for Rs 8 lakh.
Kude claimed that the police took no action despite a complaint, compounding his mental and physical suffering. He has now said that if he does not receive justice, he and his family will self-immolate in front of the Mantralaya in Mumbai, the state government's headquarters.
The moneylenders have been identified as Kishore Bawankule, Manish Kalbande, Laxman Urkude, Pradeep Bawankule, Sanjay Ballarpure and Laxman Borkar, all residents of Brahmapuri town.
