Techie, 28, Dies By Suicide, May Have Fallen Into Online Gaming Debt Trap

A 28-year-old software engineer, found dead at his parental home in Telangana's Patancheru, about 30 km from Hyderabad, allegedly killed himself after falling into an online gaming debt trap, police said. The 28-year-old was working with a top software firm in Bengaluru.

Ravi Kumar had been working from home for the last seven months. While it's not yet known how much money he had borrowed, his parents suspect he was facing debts and suffered losses while playing online games. His father reportedly gave him Rs 1 lakh to pay off the debt but that apparently did not suffice.

Police officer Rajeshwar Rao told NDTV that "it appears that the man was chided by his father for losing money in this manner and spoiling his own life despite holding a good job".  "That could have possibly upset him and drove him to take this extreme step,'' he said.

In August, a Rs 1,100 crore online gaming fraud was busted by the Hyderabad police. A Chinese national was arrested in the case.

Online gaming is banned in the state and the man was said to be using a SIM from Karnataka.

From December, six deaths by suicide were reported in and around Hyderabad, of people who faced harassment after borrowing money from unregulated online money apps. The Hyderabad police had said the modus operandi seemed very similar to the gambling racket that they had busted earlier and there seemed to be some link between the two.

During the probe it had came to light that the domain name servers of the gaming websites are based out of China and the data hosting services are cloud-based in the US and operated from China, the police had said. 

"It is understood from the investigation so far that the companies are controlled through a firm called Beijing T Power Company based out of China," Hyderabad Commissioner of Police Anjani Kumar had said at the time.

Last month, another multi-crore money lending scam had surfaced. Officials said the call centres - under probe - employed hundreds of youngsters trained to lure customers, entrap them into borrowing successive sums from multiple apps, and were trained to "abuse, defame and blackmail" victims in order to recover borrowed money and the interest.