Blue Whale Challenge: Create awareness, SC tells Doordarshan, private media

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government-run Doordarshan and the private media houses to create awareness about the threats posed by dangerous online games like the Blue Whale Challenge.

Doordarshan and private news channels must create awareness by telecasting its hazards in their prime time programme, the apex court said in its order.

The apex court passed the order while responding to a plea seeking a blanket ban on Blue Whale Challenge and other similar online games.

During the hearing in the case, the Centre today told the apex court that it has set up an expert committee to look into the issue and will file a report within three weeks.

The apex court had earlier directed the Centre to constitute a panel of experts to block such life-threatening online games.

Concerned over the loss of several innocent lives, a Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, had earlier sought the Centre's response on a batch of petitions seeking to block similar games like Choking game, Salt and Ice Challenge, Fire Challenge, Cutting challenge, Eyeball challenge and Human Embroidery game.    

A 73-year-old Chennai-based advocate NS Ponnaiah, who blamed the deadly Blue Whale game for over 100 suicides throughout the country, had filed a petition seeking a blanket ban on it.

Blue Whale Challenge is an online game that challenges players for over 50 days, demanding them to complete tasks given by an anonymous controller.

The game initially asks the player to draw a whale on a piece of paper, then carve a whale figure on their body, and then gives other tasks such as watching horror movies alone on odd hours etc. 

The task concludes with the final challenge that is committing suicide. 

A group of cyber experts had recently warned that a number of fictitious Blue Whale gaming apps and malware are still available on the internet which lure users to download them and in the process steal their personal information.

With ANI inputs