Blue Whale effect? MP schoolboy kills self; Bengal plans school syllabus revamp
The Madhya Pradesh Police is probing whether the 11th standard student committed suicide after playing the Blue Whale game.
An 11th standard boy from in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district committed suicide by jumping in front of a train on Saturday night, which was caught on a CCTV camera of a nearby building.
Police have launched a probe to find out if the infamous Blue Whale game pushed him to commit suicide after one of his friends claimed that the 16-year-old-boy was playing the deadly game.
Police have sent the boy’s mobile phone to a cyber expert in Bhopal to check its contents.
Damoh Kotwali police station officer Pradeep Soni said on Sunday morning police got information that the body of a young boy was lying near the railway track at Phutera Gate.
“Prima facie it seems a suicide case. The boy hailed from Damoh’s Bada Pul area and his father works at Damoh Janpad Panchayat office,” he said.
Damoh superintendent of police Vivek Agarwal told HT the police are probing whether that boy committed suicide due to Blue Whale game.
Agarwal said the boy’s family members told police that some time ago they had cautioned him about the deadly game. “The family members said he had assured them that he will not play any such game,” he said.
The SP said the boy’s family members and relatives denied that he was playing the Blue Whale game. “However we have seized the boy’s mobile phone. As its keypad is locked, the phone has been sent to Bhopal for analysis by a cyber forensic expert,” he said.
Read more: Blue Whale case? Panchkula youth jumps off roof, critical
Local sources said during the cremation, one of his friends told local media that some days ago when he had asked the boy to download a popular game, the boy had told him he was already busy playing Blue Whale.
Last month a class 7 student from Indore allegedly tried to commit suicide by jumping off the third floor of his school building after apparently by taking up the Blue Whale Challenge, but was saved by his classmates and the sports teacher. The incident took place at Indore’s Chameli Devi Public School soon after the assembly was over.
Meanwhile, the Bengal government is planning to introduce a separate chapter on “Responsible use of Internet,” in school syllabus in view of regular reports of school children in the state becoming victims of deadly online game.
“The initiative is just at a proposal stage. State education department will consult with experts on how this subject can be introduced as a separate chapter and what would be contents of the chapter. If everything goes according to plan, the separate chapter will be introduced from the next academic year from January,” a senior state government official said.
Till the time the separate chapter is introduced, state government will conduct workshops in different schools throughout the state to counsel students on the danger of playing games like Blue Whale either online or through mobile applications.
The officer also said that under the instructions of state education minister, Partha Chatterjee, the government is sending instructions to all schools in the state to ban the use of mobile phone by students during the school hours.
“The state government is determined to stop this menace called Blue Whale. And for that we will take all necessary steps to make the students aware of the danger of such games. We expect the schools to cooperate with us to ban use of mobile phones during the school hours,” Chatterjee said.
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