India: Boy fakes kidnapping to extort money from mother, then buys smartphone to play games

Patna: A grade 10 student in Bihar faked his own kidnapping to extort a huge sum of money from his widowed mother to buy an expensive smartphone just so that he could play the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds game.

The story came to light after his mother received a call on her phone on Wednesday with the caller claiming to have kidnapped her son and demanding a ransom of Rs500,000 in lieu of safely releasing the boy from his captivity. The 16-year-old boy stayed with his mother in the Kankarbagh locality of Patna.

The woman hurriedly reported the matter to the local police which promptly began investigation and recovered the boy from a student lodge in Purnia, some 350 km from Patna.

During the quizzing, the boy told the police that he loves the PUBG games and wanted an attractive handset to play it saying all his friends own expensive phones. According to the boy, he had reserved a mobile phone for Rs31,000 to buy it online but had no money.

“I had the information that my mother applied for a bank loan of Rs350,000 and the money has been credited to her account. So, I faked my own kidnapping and demanded a ransom of Rs500,000 by changing my voice. I thought I would be bargaining about the ransom money during conversation but my plan failed,” the accused told his interrogators.

Stern warning

“He (the accused boy) revealed all his friends own expensive mobile phones, laptops and racer bikes, and he too wanted to buy such a thing to fulfil his wishes,” local Patrakar Nagar police station in-charge Pramod Kumar said on Friday. The police, however, let the boy go home with a stern warning.

The boy also told the police he had learnt from YouTube that none could trace one’s location if one makes a call from WhatsApp. “So, I made calls to my mother only through WhatsApp but was caught,” he said. Further, he revealed he had been regularly reading the local newspapers to keep himself updated about the news stories related to kidnapping.

He also revealed he was addicted to PUBG games and it was this addiction that prompted him to commit this crime. The PUBG online which has become the top earning mobile game worldwide for July 2020 is slowly taking the youngsters in its grip in Bihar. In the past few months alone, at least three boys have lost their lives for this particular addiction.

Last month, a youth fell from the roof of his building and was killed in Lakhisarai district since he was so engrossed in the game. Another incident was reported in March this year from Gopalgnaj where a 14-year-old boy committed suicide after being scolded by his parents for playing PUBG.

Another teenager ended his life in Bhagalpur district after being reprimanded by his mother for wasting his time on playing games rather than focussing his attention on studying.