Odisha Police directs all state districts to remove 'Blue Whale Challenge' from social media

Bhubaneswar: Odisha police has asked all district police authorities to remove from social media the ‘Blue Whale Challenge’, an online game which allegedly claimed several lives of children in the country. [caption id=“attachment_3924413” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] “You are requested to take steps to ensure that such links of the deadly game in its own name or any similar game is immediately removed from the social media platform,” Odisha DGP KB Singh said in an official note to senior officers. In his directive, Singh told all SPs in the state to keep a watch on various social media outlets and ensure that the suicide game was not available to the users in the state. Singh said this order should be carried out with immediate effect taking into account the urgency of the issue. “It is understood that an administrator of the game uses social media platform to invite/initiate children to play this game, which may eventually led to the extreme step for self inflicting injuries including suicide,” the DGP said. Recently, a Class 10 girl in Sambalpur was found hanging from a fan in her room. The girl died at the hospital later. Though the local police was probing the causes of the girl’s death, her parents linked the death to ‘Blue Whale Challenge’. Sambalpur SP Sanjeev Arora has, however, already ruled out the Blue Whale game angle in the incident.