Home Ministry issues advisory to Police across India over Blue Whale Game

In the wake of the increasing number of deaths due to the Internet-based suicide game- Blue Whale Challenge, the Home Ministry on Tuesday issued an advisory to Police across India to take strict against concerned websites that provide links to download the deadly game.

Besides, show cause notices were also issued to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, the state of Delhi and the Union of India by the Delhi high court over a writ petition seeking a ban on the game that reportedly has taken a toll on over 15 lives in past month or so.

The public interest litigation filed by a Delhi-based advocate Gurmeet Singh says the Blue Whale Challenge has abetted suicide and/or self-destructive grievous injuries by children. It wants prominent social media platforms to be restrained from posting or allowing users to post material pertaining to Blue Whale and a special team be appointed to oversee compliance with the direction.

Citing the example of China, the plea said that “in May 2017, Tencent, China’s largest Internet service portal, closed 12 suspicious Blue Whale-related network groups on its social networking platform QQ. The search results of related keywords was also blocked in QQ.”

The Blue Whale Challenge consists of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period. The final challenge requires the player to commit suicide. The game is attracting teens as young as 12-years-old in Russia and Central Asian countries but recent reports suggest the game could be spreading across Europe and into the UK. The game has been blamed by the Russian media as the reason why over 130 children committed suicide between November 2015 and April 2016.