In separate incidents involving the notorious Blue Whale online game, which sets out a series of dangerous challenges culminating in suicide, two boys tried to kill themselves, according to media sources.
In the first case, an Indore Class 7 boy attempted to jump from the third floor of his school. However, Media reports said his friends and a physical training instructor stopped him in time.
The Hindustan Times reported that the 14-year-old wrote an entry in his school diary about completing a challenge and showed it to some of his school friends, but school sources said they didn’t take it seriously.
In the other case, the victim, a 14-year-old boy from Solapur, was on his way to Pune to complete the ultimate Blue Whale challenge of committing suicide but was stopped by police officers.
A Bhigwan police officer said the Class IX student, who was reportedly addicted to the game, appeared “lost” and was very quiet.
“After the boy went missing, his parents started inquiring with his friends when they came to know that he was playing the Blue Whale challenge,” the officer told PTI.
A Mumbai teen recently committed suicide after informing his friends that he was playing the game and would not be at school on Monday.
Blue Whale is a 50-day-challenge that is believed to have originated in Russia. A series of tasks are assigned to players by the game administrators, each one potentially fatal, with the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide by jumping off a building.
A spate of Blue Whale suicide cases has alarmed the authorities, who have announced measures to raise awareness of the dangers of online games.