Debt to suicides, as Indians take up online games, gambling fears grow

tech.hindustantimes.com:

B. Bhavani assured her father she would quit online card games - a promise she had made several times before as her family in southern India fretted about her mounting debts. A few hours later, the 29-year-old took her own life.

Bhavani, who was married with two young children, had racked up losses that her husband estimated at more than 1 million Indian rupees ($12,255) since she started using online apps to play games like rummy about a year before her death in June.

"It started slowly, with small bets; my wife won a few times and then she wouldn't stop," R. Bhagyaraj told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as his two-year-old son cycled around his in-laws' yard in the city of Chennai.

"It's so easy to download these apps, then get drawn in," he said, adding that he now spends almost his entire salary paying back the money Bhavani borrowed to gamble.

Across India, rising internet use has seen a surge in online gaming involving money, including games of chance that are considered akin to gambling, which is mostly banned across India.

While most states and platforms ban gambling apps, there is no nationwide mechanism to regulate online real-money games - including games considered skill-based such as some fantasy sports and poker.

But amid growing concern about gambling addiction and gambling-related suicides, the federal government has set up a task force to help draft a new law to replace India's colonial-era Public Gambling Act and ensure a "responsible, transparent and safe" online gaming environment.

Anxious to tackle problem gambling, some Indian states have started to take action of their own. Tamil Nadu - where Bhavani lived - banned online real-money games in October, citing a spate of suicides.

Internet safety campaigners