Police stop Panchkula boy’s Rohtak friend from suicide for Blue Whale Challenge

The two boys were playing the 50-day online challenge which ends with players committing suicide. Rohtak police found that the Panchkula teen had sent the game’s final challenge link to his friend before dying.

Police prevented the suicide of a Rohtak boy who was allegedly playing the deadly online game Blue Whale Challenge along with a 16-year-old Panchkula boy who killed himself on Saturday.

Karan Thakur in Panchkula was sharing links from the Blue Whale Challenge with his Rohtak friend, Pankaj Kumar. He committed suicide on Saturday. Police later found sketches in a notebook (pictured here) Thakur did, speculating of ways to die. (Sant Arora/HT Photo)

Pankaj Kumar, a standard 11 student in Rohtak, had studied in Panchkula till Class 10 with Karan Thakur. The two were close friends, police said, and Thakur would send links about the game to Pankaj.

“Thakur had sent the link of the final challenge to Pankaj before committing suicide. We got to know this from the Panchkula police who checked Thakur’s phone. We immediately called up Pankaj’s father and told him about the entire incident. He locked Pankaj in a room till the time we reached his house,” said inspector Manoj Verma, who led the investigation team.

Pankaj used to play the game on his father’s phone, he Verma added.

When Thakur sent him the link to the final challenge — committing suicide — the phone was with Pankaj’s father.

Thakur hanged himself at his residence in Panchkula on Saturday. Police found that he had drawn sketches of various suicide options in his book.

The teen is among dozens of youth who have played the Blue Whale challenge in India and have completed it, resulting in their suicides. Many players begin the 50-day challenge unaware that the final task involves killing themselves.