Blue Whale Challenge: Supreme Court tells Centre to set up expert panel to firewall game

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday sought the government’s response on a plea seeking to firewall virtual games like Blue Whale which has allegedly led to several suicides. A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra asked the government to constitute an experts committee to create such firewalls. A firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorised access to or from a private network by controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic. [caption id=“attachment_4139047” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AP[/caption] The bench, comprising Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, also restrained all high courts from entertaining such pleas. The apex court is already hearing a plea filed by a 73-year-old man from Tamil Nadu seeking a ban on the Blue Whale challenge game allegedly linked to the deaths of several children worldwide. The Delhi High Court had on 22 August sought the response of Facebook, Google and Yahoo on a plea to direct them to take down the links of the Blue Whale challenge. Taking a serious view of the game, the Madras High Court had on 4 September directed the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government to explore possibility of banning it. Later, the Delhi High Court on 19 September had asked the Centre to place before it the steps taken to comply with the Madras High Court direction to ban the ‘Blue Whale’ challenge. The Blue Whale challenge is reportedly a suicide game in which the player is given certain tasks to complete over a period of 50 days and the final task leads him or her to commit suicide. The player is also asked to share photos after finishing each challenge. The sudden popularity of the lethal online game had forced the government to issue directions to the internet firms to remove its links.