Kerala: Teen commits suicide to allegedly complete 'Blue Whale' challenge

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India] Aug 15 (ANI): Parents of a sixteen-year-old boy who committed suicide on July 26, raised doubts on Tuesday that it was due to the Blue Whale Challenge game that their son ended his life. Manoj, a native of Vilappilsala in Trivandrum committed suicide by hanging himself at his residence. Yesterday, the Class 11 student's mother informed the police that she suspected her son committed suicide as he was playing the Blue Whale Challenge. According to reports, the boy's mother told a media channel that her son had downloaded the game in November last year. "He said in the last stage of the game, one should either commit suicide or murder someone. I got scared after hearing it and asked my son not to play the game. My son had once hurt himself using a compass and jumped into a river though he did not know how to swim. He was later rescued. Before he took the extreme step, my son had deleted the game from his mobile phone." Kerala Police had registered a case of unnatural death then and concluded it to be personal problem. Earlier in the day, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology took a strict measure against the deadly online game, Blue whale Challenge and asked social media giants like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo to immediately remove all the links relating to the game. "Instances of children committing suicide while Blue Whale Challenge have been reported in India...You are hereby requested to ensure that any such link of this deadly game in its own name or similar game is immediately removed from your platform," stated the ministry, in a letter, to the internet majors. Taking the cognizance of the recent deaths in Mumbai and West Bengal, the ministry said the proponent of Blue Whale Challenge should be reported to law enforcement agencies. On August 14, a series of tweets were put out by Ministry of Child and Development stating that Maneka Gandhi has taken up the matter with Home Minister Rajnath Singh and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. On August 12, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had urged the Centre to take immediate steps to ban the Blue Whale Challenge in the country "to save precious lives". The deadly online 'Blue Whale Challenge' game, however is reportedly a suicide game that challenges players for over 50 days, wherein demanding them to complete tasks given by an anonymous controller. (ANI)