The Delhi High Court on Thursday expressed concern over children allegedly committing suicide while playing the 'Blue Whale' Challenge[1], an Internet suicide game, that has been allegedly linked to the deaths of several children worldwide.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar also wondered why adults were getting into this game, in which dangerous tasks like self-inflicting of wounds on the body, are assigned to the player by administrators during a 50-day period.
The bench said it can understand children getting influenced, but why were adults getting involved in it.
"If an adult is told to do a task, why would he/she go and jump from a building," it said, adding that "we are wondering why both children and adult are doing this".
The high court, however, refrained from passing any order on the plea seeking direction to the Internet companies including Google[2], Facebook[3] and Yahoo[4] to take down the links of the Blue whale[5].
It wished to know whether the government has issued any prohibition order with regard to downloading of the Blue Whale game.
The court also sought to know from the petitioner, advocate Gurmeet Singh, whether any such incident has happened in Delhi. It asked the petitioner whether any prohibition order could be passed on Thursday and fixed the matter for further hearing on August 22.
Banning Blue Whale Means Nothing - Because It Isn’t Possible[6]
The Ministry of Electronics and IT had directed the Internet majors - Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo - to immediately remove the links of the deadly Blue Whale Challenge, which has led several children in India and...