A Class 10 boy was rescued in Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district after he wrote on his answer sheet during an examination that he had reached the last level of the Blue Whale Challenge, a lethal online game that has already claimed over a dozen lives in India and many more across the world, and was being encouraged to commit suicide.
The student of Utkarsh School in Khilchipur, around 160 km from state capital Bhopal, wrote in his Sanskrit answer sheet he had completed the 49th stage and was being warned that his parents would be killed if he failed to finish the game.
“I am trapped in the game which I have been playing for the last two months. I am now in the final stage and they are telling me to commit suicide otherwise they will kill my parents,” the boy wrote in his answer sheet.
The Sanskrit teacher, Hemlata Sringi, informed the school and district administration and his parents about the boy.
The Blue Whale Challenge, reportedly created by a former convict in Russia, is said to provoke players to indulge in daring, self-destructive tasks, which must be filmed and shared as “proof”, for 50 days before finally taking the “winning” step of killing themselves. Players also carve a whale-like figure on their arms.
Sub-divisional magistrate Praveen Prajapati said the boy is still in a state of shock but was counselled along with his parents with the help of trained counsellors from the women and child welfare department.
The boy has promised he will not play the game, Prajapati added.
A 17-year-old girl was also rescued in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur after she allegedly tried to jump into a lake as part of the Blue Whale game and told the police if she didn’t complete the challenge her mother and rest of her family could come to harm.
In another incident, a first-year management student at Chakravarti Rajgopalachari Institute of Management (CRIM) in Bhopal informed his friends on social media that he was playing the game after completing the first stage.
“I have ‘acquired’ the first stage in the game,” he wrote on a WhatsApp group.
His friends immediately alerted the college administration, who counselled him, and he has promised to discontinue the game, authorities said.
The student said the link had come to him. After completing the task of the first stage he had made a small tattoo on his hand.
The sudden popularity of the lethal online game in India has forced the government to issue directions to Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Microsoft, and Yahoo to immediately remove its links.
It has also issued an advisory and police teams across states are working with schools to counsel teenagers and wean them away from the online game.
