On March 3, a married woman from Uttarpradesh’s Maharajganj left her home in the night to meet her new lover in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. The woman found her new love online while playing the online game PUBG (PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds).
According to Police reports, the incident took place in Maharajganj’s Badhara Baraipar village. A resident of the village, a woman often passed her time playing PUBG online and became addicted. Soon, she found a co-player from Muzaffarpur in Bihar and fell in love with him. The online multiplayer game uses the geostatic location of the player to locate nearby players during the game. On the night of March 3, The woman left her house to meet her new love from Bihar, whom she met during many a game.
After the woman went missing, her husband filed a missing report in Shyamdeurwa police station in Maharajganj on March 4. The Police investigation started soon after the case was registered. According to SHO Anand Gupta, A woman named Sushmita Sarkar developed an addiction to PUBG while being alone in her house. During a game, she met a boy living in Muzaffarpur, Bihar and started talking to him on a daily basis. To meet her newfound love, Sushmita left her home on the night of March 3.
The Maharajganj Police found Sushmita through surveillance and she has been handed over to her family. According to the SHO, Sushmita and her husband were originally from Bengal and were living in Maharajganj for a long time.
The PUBG menace
Online Gaming application PUBG, operated by a South Korea based corporation has found millions of subscribers worldwide while some countries have banned it citing over-addiction among citizens. On September 2, 2020, invoking the IT act under Section 69A, The Central IT ministry banned 118 malicious Chinese apps including PUBG which operated in India through its Chinese franchise Tencent Games. Apps users across the globe have been seen crossing all limits to access the game at their might.
There were reports of a 21-year-old son killing his father for stopping him from playing PUBG in Karnataka in 2019. The Government of Pakistan in July 2020 banned the app after two youths committed suicide after being stopped from playing the game in Pakistan. PUBG has launched again in India – both in Android and iOS versions after the operations were taken over by a gaming company Krafton.