Allegedly upset over his parents warning him not to play PUBG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds), a teenager allegedly committed suicide at Malkajgiri. Kallakuri Sambashiva was found hanging at his residence, according to police. PUBG was developed in 2017 and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of the South Korean video game company Bluehole.
It is played by multiple players simultaneously, with the last man standing in the shootout being declared the winner. According to police, Sambashiv, aged 16, the second child and only son to his parents Bharath Raj and Umadevi, was studying in Class X at a private school in Malkajgiri and was residing at Vishnupuri under the police limits of the Rachakonda Commissionerate. Bharath Raj is a priest and Umadevi is a housewife, while their elder daughter has just completed her intermediate studies.
Sambashiva was appearing for his Class X final examinations and he had one paper left (English Paper- II) which was scheduled for April 3. Meanwhile, a few months ago, he downloaded the PUBG game on his mother's mobile and spent the majority of his time playing it. Since then, he got addicted to the game. Though they never objected to him playing the game, they told him to limit the time he spent on the game. However, he continued spending time playing PUBG even after his final examinations began.
On March 31, when he was playing the game, his mother scolded him and asked him to prepare for the examinations. Upset, he locked himself in his bedroom. After a while, his worried mother knocked on the door, but there was no response. She then called her husband who was at work and alerted her neighbours as well. They later broke open the door and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. "They rushed him to a nearby private hospital, but he was declared brought dead," said sub-inspector K Sanjeeva. "Though he did not leave any suicide note, his parents said that he was addicted to PUBG and was upset after being scolded by his mother. We are looking at it from other angles also," said Sanjeeva Reddy, adding that a case under section 174 CrPC was registered and an investigation is underway.
Recently, city based consumer activist Vijay Gopal also took to social networking site Twitter to reach out to Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology SS Ahluwalia and Union Minister for Law and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad seeking a ban on the game. "The game promotes cruelty and violence among players. Before lives are lost, as had happened because of the Blue Whale challenge, the government should impose a blanket ban," said Vijay Gopal. The game which has over 100 million downloads on Google Play Store became a hit immediately after it was released in 2017. Other video games including Pokemon Go have also received such flak in the recent past.
