Minor kills cousin under influence of online game addiction

Jaipur, Dec 13 (IANS) A minor addicted to online games Free Fire Pubg Dragon Squad and Teen Patti killed his younger cousin and buried his body. He has been arrested by the Rajasthan police, confirmed police officials on Monday.

The accused, after killing his cousin, created a fake ID on Instagram and asked for a ransom of Rs 5 lakh by messaging his uncle, said Nagaur SP Abhijit Singh.

He said that on December 9, a complaint was lodged in the Ladnu police station, alleging that his 12-year-old nephew who left the house on December 8 morning with his mother's phone, had not reached home yet.

Police started an intensive search for the missing boy and a special team was constituted at the police station level and cyber cell under the supervision of Additional Superintendent of Police Vimal Singh Nehra and other officials.

The SP said that on the second day of the incident, the uncle of the missing boy living in Assam got a message on Instagram asking for a ransom of Rs 5 lakh. On informing the police, the SHO Rajendra Singh asked him to keep the caller engaged.

At the same time, the team traced the IP location from the cyber technology of Instagram ID, which turned out to be the village of the kidnapped child.

Due to the ID of Instagram being generated at the time of the incident and the IP location of the kidnapped child's village, the name of the minor came to the fore in the investigation, who was reportedly demanding a ransom.

Detained and interrogated psychologically, the minor said that he and his cousin used to play online games Free Fire Pubg Dragon Square and Teen Patti. Online payment in this game had to be given in the form of tokens. He had gone to the farm with his 12-year-old cousin on the day of the incident. In a fight over online payment, he strangled him to death, then out of fear, threw him into a ditch and threw soil on him.

Due to the need to recharge to invest money in online games, he made a plan to demand ransom and asked his uncle for a ransom of Rs 5 lakhs by creating a fake ID. The dead child's body and mobile phones of both the children were recovered through the detained minor.

The accused in fact showed his uncle the slippers and phone cover of the deceased and then also clicked a picture of him after taking his body out of the ditch to show that the boy was in his hold, said police officials.