A techie working with a top software company reunited with his family after he underwent seven months of counselling to give up his gambling habit. His wife, also a techie, and children had left him after they found his gambling habit in which he had lost Rs 70 lakh in savings.

According to a Times of India report, his family recently returned to his home in CV Raman Nagar, a Bengaluru neighbourhood. For the techie, who hailed from a village in Tumakuru, Karnataka, gambling was always a weakness, according to the report. When he was a teen, he used to place bets on local cricket games. He continued with his habit even after getting a job in a top IT firm after graduation. In 2014, he met his partner, also a techie, online and got married soon after. They had two girl children. But little did his wife knew about his gambling habit.

Last year, his wife accidentally found that he was hooked to playing online rummy and wasn’t focusing on work and family matters. After later discovering that he had lost Rs 70 lakh of his savings on gambling, his wife decided to leave his home along with the two children for her mother’s place. She also approached a police station with a complaint against her husband’s online rummy addiction and the huge financial losses due to it.
Parihar, an initiative of Bengaluru City Police for women, invited his wife for sort out the differences between the couple. She explained the financial burden of her family and emotional trauma she and her kids were going through. Later in October, her husband was also summoned to Parihar.

An official of Parihar told Times of India that her husband was initially irritated by wife’s complaint to the Police and insisted that she and the kids return home. But his wife did not budge, saying that she and her children won’t return to his home unless he gave up the gambling habit.

The techie was sent to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences for tech de-addiction therapy after
numerous counselling sessions with a senior counsellor of Parihar.
“The wife was extremely happy about his improvement over the seven months and the husband finally declared himself free of online gambling addiction as he walked into my office this week, hand in hand with his wife,” the senior counsellor of Parihar, told Times of India. The techie even has now converted his bank account into a joint one with his spouse.