16-year-old PUBG addict fakes kidnap

Hyderabad: A 16-year-old boy, addicted to the popular online PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds game, faked his own kidnapping and sought ransom from his parents after they took away his mobile phone, police said here on Monday.

The teenager, undergoing coaching for IIT, went missing on October 11, after informing his parents that he was on his way to visit his friend, they said, adding the parents later filed a police complaint.

However, the boy left for Mumbai.

On the way when the bus in which he was travelling stopped at Sholapur city of Maharashtra, he got down. He took a phone from a passer-by and called his mother disguising his voice saying "her son was abducted" and demanded Rs 3 lakh for his "release", police said. On October 12, the boy came back to Hyderabad and booked an online ticket to Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh where his maternal grandparents live.

But, his mother got a message about the ticket booking and alerted police and a police team went to the central bus stand and traced him, Raidurgam police station Inspector S Ravinder said. Police said the boy, who secured very good marks in the class 10 exams, was not performing well in his studies and got addicted to playing the PUBG game after which his parents took his mobile phone.