The central government introduced the Online Gaming Bill 2025, which received approval from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and yesterday, it also received the President’s assent. This means it has now been approved as law. The primary objective of this law is to restrict Real Money Games (RMG), which have been ruining countless people who get trapped in them. A similar case has emerged from Mumbai, where a businessman’s story reveals the frightening reality of online real money games.
Yes, Ajit Tripathi (name changed) had earned everything through decades of back-breaking hard work and had journeyed from poverty to wealth. Then, he got so entangled in online gaming that he lost all his money and even ended up with a massive debt.
Man drowns in crores of debt
By getting involved with the online gaming and betting platform Parimatch, this individual not only lost his savings worth crores but is now also drowning in debt worth crores. This is a significant example to understand the necessity of the online gaming law introduced by the center, which shows how people in India, attracted by advertisements featuring Bollywood, Tollywood celebrities, cricket stars, and social media influencers, get drawn towards these online betting sites and real money gaming apps, only to lose everything after getting trapped.
Started during Corona, then Ajit kept getting trapped
For the first time, this individual’s story was heard, which clearly reveals the horror of illegal online betting platforms. Actually, during the COVID pandemic in 2021, Ajit was at home and while using his mobile, his attention fell on an advertisement that promised huge profits from online gaming. He mentioned that a film actress was endorsing it. At that time, Ajit had incurred losses in his business and was trying to recover from them. That was the moment when he clicked on the given link and reached the Parimatch gaming-betting app.
According to Ajit, initially, he received tremendous returns, and people associated with the app even contacted him directly, pressuring him to invest larger amounts for even bigger profits and luring him with good bonuses. It also happened that he received about seven to ten times his deposited amount. Ajit shared the figures of earnings and losses, stating that after receiving such huge returns and getting trapped in the web of people connected to the app, over three years, he invested a total of more than 27 crore rupees but only managed to get back 15 crore rupees, while he lost 12.22 crore rupees.
Couldn’t even withdraw his deposited money
Ajit explained that while playing online, he had made massive profits, but when the earnings turned into lakhs and then crores, he couldn’t even withdraw his deposited amount. After that, the situation reverted to how it was before, and his business also continued to run at a loss, forcing him to take loans to cover the losses. He described how he deposited money into various private and government bank accounts to play on the app, but when he started contacting the banks regarding withdrawals and the amounts in those accounts, he was turned away. Meanwhile, the people who were constantly in touch with him initially to deposit lakhs and crores of rupees stopped responding to calls or messages altogether.
