One morning in February 2020, a couple of months after she had an accident and was unable to work, Surya decided to sell one of her kidneys. The mother of two girls – already reeling under loans of 500,000 Indian rupees ($6,101) – had been the sole breadwinner since her husband lost his job.
Although she knew the sale of kidneys is illegal in India, she went online on her smartphone and typed in “kidney” and “sell”, and dozens of pages opened up. On a Facebook page Surya found, she put down her number and posted that she needed to sell one of her kidneys.
