On December 31, 2021, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) staff on duty found a 16-year-old boy loitering on Platform No. 1 of Mysuru City Railway station. When questioned, he replied that he had come to collect the bet money he had won in an online game from a competitor, who claimed that he was from Mysuru.
The 16-year-old boy, a resident of Nandini Layout in Bengaluru, had left his house without informing his parents after winning a bet of ₹ 1,000 in an online game that involved shooting down the opponent. The anonymous competitor whom the boy had befriended online, had asked the boy to come to Mysuru to collect the bet money. But, when the 16-year-old boy reached Mysuru by train, his online competitor did not respond to his messages, leaving him in the lurch.
“There was no way to trace the online competitor, who had neither shared a mobile number nor was he/she responding to boy’s online messages. The runaway boy was handed over to Child Helpline, which in turn produced him before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) before re-runiting him with his parents”, said Venkatesha K., Inspector of Railway Protection Force (RPF), Mysuru.
