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After a 14-year-old ended his life by jumping off a building in Mumbai, India seems to have fallen victim to the fatal online game, Blue Whale Challenge, devised to make teenagers commit suicide in the end.
“The only thing you’d be left with is a picture of me,” wrote Manpreet Sahas, the 14-year-old Mumbai boy who jumped off a seven-storey building on Thursday.
Right before jumping from the building the boy took a photograph where only his legs can be seen and is captioned: “Soon the only thing you would be left with is a picture of me.”
The suicide is the first 'Blue Whale' death in the country.
What is the Blue Whale Challenge?
The challenge, which is believed to have originated on Facebook assigns people daily tasks, which they have to complete over 50 days.
The horrific tasks include waking up at unusual hours, causing self-harm and watching horror movies. The tasks get more extreme as the game progresses and eventually leads to the last task of suicide.
The challenge first came to the limelight globally after a Russian girl posted a picture of a blue whale on Instagram before jumping off a 14-storey building with her best friend.
Awareness about the Blue Whale challenge has been increasing as social media firms have now started offering help to people searching for the Blue Whale Challenge.
Several media reports quoted the Mumbai police saying that the boy was addicted to the game.
As per a report in HT, Cybercrime expert Vijay Ram Mukhi stated that links are shared in Russian or Chinese languages and so the search engines with servers in India can’t locate them.
A WhatsApp forward is being circulated in Mumbai informing parents of the issue and people have been advised to stay wary of children’s behaviour and monitor their browsing history.
The creator of the Blue Whale Challenge was reportedly arrested by the Russian police earlier this year. He claimed in court that the people who accessed the challenge were “biological waste” and that he was trying to cleanse society.
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