Online betting in Telangana: Losses, loans, lives cut short

HYDERABAD: In the quiet hours before dawn, Kaligota Akash cradled his five-month-old son, tears mingling with desperate whispers. “Call me daddy,” he pleaded, knowing the infant’s silence was a final, cruel reminder of the life he was leaving behind.

Hours later, the 22-year-old succumbed to poison, a victim not just of his despair but of an invisible predator: online betting apps. His story — a sole breadwinner drowning in debt and parents shattered by loss — presents the grim reality, where digital gambling’s allure has turned phones into weapons and dreams into obituaries.