Odisha Police has asked all district police authorities to take steps for removal of the deadly 'Blue Whale Challenge' online game from social media, an official said on Thursday. The direction of the police came following the suicide of a Class 10 girl in Dhanakauda of Sambalpur district. It is suspected that the girl committed suicide after playing the Blue Whale game, which allegedly claimed several lives of children in the country.
"You are requested to take steps to ensure that such links of the deadly game in its own name or any similar game is immediately removed from the social media platform," Odisha Director General of Police (DGP) K.B. Singh said in a letter to senior officers. Expressing concern over the matter, Singh directed all Superintendent of Police (SPs) to keep a watch on various social media outlets and ensure that the suicide game was not available to the users in the state.
"It is understood that an administrator of the game uses a social media platform to invite/initiate children to play this game, which may eventually lead to the extreme step for self-inflicting injuries including suicide," the DGP said. Meanwhile, Sambalpur SP Sanjeev Arora ruled out that the death of the Class 10 girl was due to the Blue Whale Challenge.
However, police have seized her mobile phone and sent it for verifications. The girl was found hanging from a fan in her room on Tuesday. A plea in the Delhi High Court had mentioned that more than six youths across India in the age group of 12-19 years have taken their lives within a span of two weeks while playing this game.
It added that deaths of teenagers have been reported from other countries including Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile and Italy. On July 30, a 14-year-old schoolboy Manpreet Singh Sahani allegedly walked off the fifth floor of his building in Sher-e-Punjab Colony in Andheri East in Mumbai.
Also, a former Manipur minister's son died after falling from a terrace in Delhi and the Blue Whale game is suspected to have driven him to death. A teenager in Kerala hanged himself to death allegedly while completing a Blue Whale challenge. A 16-year-old student attempted suicide by jumping off the fourth floor of his house in Delhi last week. Police were probing the reasons behind the suicide attempt, including the online game Blue Whale Challenge.
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