Rotary Rainbow Project study reveals suicides cases in Tamil Nadu wrongly attributed to online gaming addiction

Rotary Rainbow Project study reveals suicides cases in Tamil Nadu wrongly attributed to online gaming addiction

India, 9 th January, 2023: A four months long study conducted by Rotary Rainbow Project has discovered false claims about online games frequently being the cause of suicides in Tamil Nadu. Over the last one year, several cases of suicide across Tamil Nadu were sensationally reported in the media as being caused by online rummy. The Rotary rainbow project has discovered that in seven cases, the actual reasons are financial hardship, debt, and family strife.

The Rotary Rainbow Project is a humanitarian initiative that offers assistance to the families of suicide victims in the state. Of the cases investigated by the project, three victims were from Chennai, two were from Coimbatore and one from Thirunchengodu. The seventh victim belonged to Kattukollai village. In the course of the investigation, all of the victims families expressed their agony in having to deal with the loss of their loved ones as well as the difficulties in receiving assistance due to the false information provided about the cause of the suicides.

Among the most damning account, was by 36 year old Saranya, the wife of suicide victim Shankar S from Thirunchengodu “ He didn’t even own a smartphone. The real reason he committed suicide was because of debt and the pressure for not being able to repay a home loan.”.

According to Sheela, the mother of suicide victim Bhuvaneshwari from Chennai, “She was tired of her husband’s alcohol addiction and unable to bear this, ended her life. But to the media, police said her husband played online games.” 

“It is our moral responsibility to these traumatized families as well as to society to identify the root cause of these tragic incidents and work to find a long-term, sustainable solution to prevent such harm in the future. Assigning a single, deceptive label to all suicides is a terrible injustice to the victims and their kin who are mourning the loss of their loved ones and trying to cope.” said Rtn PP Sridhar of Rotary Club of Chennai Infocity.

The erroneus reporting of suicide cases has led to demands by various organisations for ban of online rummy. Experts feel that by falsely attributing cause of suicide, it diverts from the issues of suicide in a state which has Tamil Nadu has historically one of India's highest suicide rates According to data by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Tamil Nadu has consistently been on the top 2 ranks amongst the states with the highest suicide rate in India since 2012.

Please check the attached both English & Tamil release for more details. Thank you.