The office of West Bengal police in West Micropore was in a tizzy. A man from Garbeta had claimed that his teenaged son was playing the dreaded Blue Whale challenge game and had cut himself to make the impression of a whale on his arm.” The media had also gathered at his house, sensing a story,” said a senior police official in West Micropore. “But during interrogation, the boy confessed that he was not playing the game. He had read of the steps that were believed to be a part of the game. A friend sent him a photo of the impression of the whale that players supposedly have to make on their body on Facebook, and he cut himself to do it.” The Blue Whale challenge – a suicide game where the player is given various tasks by an administrator over a 50-day period, ranging from isolation to self-harm and ultimately suicide – is not really new. Believed to have originated in Russia, the game has allegedly claimed over 100 lives in Russia and Europe. The alleged creator of the game, Philipp Budeikin, is in prison in Russia. Ilya Sidorov, believed to be an administrator of the game, has also reportedly been arrested in Moscow. The game, initially believed to have been available on the social networking site VKontakte, is said to have got its name from the popular belief that blue whales sometimes beach themselves to die. Whale Alert
India woke up to the Blue Whale alarm, after a boy in Mumbai’s Andhra area committed suicide last month. Newspaper reports quoted friends as saying that he was playing the suicide game. Though the police have as yet found nothing to link his death to the game, the words “Blue Whale challenge” made an entry in popular discourse – triggering both curiosity and panic. Reports of other Blue-Whale related incidents followed– from Solapur, Dehradun, Indore, Kerala, West Bengal, Delhi, Jaipur and Punjab. The police found nothing to confirm the allegations, and in many cases, the Blue Whale bogey raised by friends or school authorities of the victim, was vehemently denied by families. As in Indore, where school authorities had said a class 7 student of their school had admitted to playing the game, after they prevented him from committing suicide. Speaking to HT a few days after the incident, the boy’s mother said that while her son did try to kill himself, he had not been playing the game. “There was some misunderstanding at the school. My son is an avid gamer, but he didn’t play Blue Whale. The teachers simply asked him ‘Do you play games’ and he said yes. They specifically meant the Blue Whale game, but my son didn’t understand that.” The game had become something of a stigma, with the result that families of alleged victims were eager to distance themselves from the game, further pushing the challenge and the cases connected with it, into the realm of the gray. Much of what is known about the game is from heresy.
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