A man from Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, addicted to online gaming, forged his own kidnapping in order to acquire money from his family to pay for the debt he acquired from online gaming.

His family went to the police station to report his kidnapping. According to the chief superintendent of police Vinod Meena, the family received a call from an international number on WhatsApp, informing them that the man had been kidnapped. The kidnapper asked for a ransom of 50,000 INR while sending them a video of the man tied up with ropes.

The family members promptly transferred the ransom amount asked by the kidnapper and filed a complaint at the police station. The kidnapper then informed that the man is released and will be found near Tarana railway station. The police sent a search party and found the man sleeping at the railway station.

An investigation was then started in which it was found that the ransom amount was transferred to the kidnapped man’s own account and later withdrawn and used in online gaming app. The police told the whole situation to the family, who then admitted that the man did have an online gaming addiction.

Chief SP Vinod Meena said, “The man said the game doubled the money; when we further questioned him, he admitted that he lost money on the gaming app and to recover it, he got himself kidnapped and asked for money from his family in the form of ransom.” Upon further investigation, the police found out that at the beginning, the man won around 22,000 INR but lost about 75,000.

The kidnapper was also a friend of the man whom he told another face story about how he needed 50,000 INR for hospital expenses for one of his friends that have been in an accident, and since he can’t ask for money directly from his family, he came up with the fake kidnapping.