"Blue Whale - This Is Not A Game But a Disaster. Once You Enter, You Can Never Exit,” wrote 19-year-old Madurai teen who committed suicide while playing ‘Blue Whale’.
According to reports, 19-year-old Madurai college student Vignesh is suspected to be the first victim in Tamil Nadu of the macabre online game Blue Whale.
The application has its origins in Russia where a number of teenage-suicides have been attributed to it. The users are asked to complete certain tasks within a 50-day period, at the end of which they are asked to kill themselves, which is the objective of the game. The game is titled Blue Whale apparently as a reference to the way the largest mammal beaches and dies at the end.
Vignesh was a second-year student at Mannar College in Madurai and police recovered his body from his room around 4:15 pm on Wednesday.
“We have found an image of a whale encrypted in his hands which prove he was playing the suicide game. We have also recovered a suicide note from his room,” NDTV reported quoting police officials.
On Tuesday another teen from the states of Assam was admitted to hospital after parents found him behaving abnormally. According to the primary investigations conducted by the police, the child was too playing the ‘suicide game’ and was planning to commit suicide.
Last month three school students allegedly committed suicide as a challenge that the ‘Blue Whale Game’ demands.
India was alerted about the Blue Whale challenge after a Mumbai boy committed suicide last month. He reportedly played blue whale challenge, according to his friends.
After the wide spread of the game and rise in the numbers of the students committing suicides, the government had ordered the internet browsers and app makers to ban the game. People play the game mainly on gaming groups, message boards and online community messaging areas.
Last month Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his Maharashtra counterpart, Devendra Fadnavis, had written to the Union government to take immediate steps against the game. The central ministry of electronics and IT asked the infotech majors to “to ensure that any such link of this deadly game in its own name or similar game is immediately removed from your platform.”
The government had also urged the social networking sites to act and had also advised the parents to track their children's online activities. But even after several efforts the game is spreading across the country and is victimizing the teenagers and the youths.
