Bhadrak: A youth committed suicide by hanging at Dhamra in Bhadrak district Monday after his uncle pulled him up for playing online mobile game PUBG.
The deceased was identified as Ganesh Sahu, 20, a native of Panijharia village under Mahulia panchayat of Chandbali block in the same district.
Reports said that Ganesh was working at a private company in Vishakhapatnam. However, following the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic, Ganesh returned home two months back.
He then went to the house of his maternal uncle, Umesh Sahu and worked at a prawn processing factory in Dhamra area along with his uncle.
Umesh was upset with Ganesh as most of the time he was playing PUBG mobile game on his smartphone instead of concentrating on the work. There were frequent arguments between Ganesh and Umesh over the youth’s addiction to the online mobile game.
Sunday, Umesh scolded Ganesh again after he found him playing PUBG instead of attending to his work. Later, Ganesh left his uncle’s place and went to his aunt’s house near the prawn processing farm.
Umesh searched for him and found him at his sister’s house and narrated the whole incident. There Ganesh’s aunt and her husband also reprimanded him for being irregular at the work.
Umesh convinced Ganesh and brought him back to the prawn processing factory. However, little did Umesh know what fate has in store for his nephew.
Ganesh was pushed into distress and hung himself at a room on the premises of the prawn processing factory.
Umesh and some employees of the factory admitted Ganesh to the Basudevpur hospital in a critical condition where doctors pronounced him dead. Dharma police registered a case and sent the body for post-mortem.
Finding a way out
A recent survey, conducted by the National School of Journalism reveals that the PUBG craze is a game-changer, in more ways than one. The game, brought out by Tencent Gaming (the South Korean parent company) has grabbed eyeballs world over. And it’s not just students, working professionals too are hooked. So much so that players end up sleep-deprived, missing meals etc, just to see the message ‘Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!’ (a PUBG-tag). The game, however, was not as well-known till Tencent Gaming released a new mobile-version which could be supported on operating systems like Android and iOS. According to a 2018 Quartz India survey, over 30 million active users play PUBG on a daily basis. India comes second in terms of PUBG user base, just behind the USA. The survey adds that the Indian gaming market is set to be worth $1.1 billion by 2020
PNN