Have Indians — children and teenagers in particular — been committing suicide and attempting to commit suicide recently? Yes, in droves.

According to a study published in The Lancet in 2013, suicide is the leading cause of death among those aged 10-24 in India, with 62,960 such deaths reported in 2013.

Have these suicides been linked to a underground cultish game called the "Blue Whale Challenge" whose supposed Russian creators — multiple people have claimed credit — are currently awaiting trial? Yes.

However, these links are merely the creation of a sensationalist media. There is in fact, no credible evidence that proves that such a game exists.



It's easy enough to go online and find various neatly formatted, standardised list of the supposed tasks involved in the challenge that always starts off with the carving of "F57" on your forearm and eventually concludes with suicide as the 50th task. And searching for the hashtags #i_am_whale and #f57 and #f58 does turn up messages related to the challenge on a number of social networks.



But how does Rajiv Makhni, writing in the Hindustan Times, know that the responses to these hashtags aren't coming from trolls or bots (as has been found to be the case in Russia), or that they aren't just instances of catfishing? (Hint: He doesn't.)



How does Ekta Handa of India Today know that they are establishing private chats with Indian kids and leading them to commit suicide? (Hint: She doesn't.)

Have reporters found evidence of any of these supposed tasks having been administered in any of the suicide cases reported in India? (Hint: They haven't, nor have the police.)

Yet, writers like Rajiv Makhni and Ekta Handa have dangerously declared that this is not a hoax, rather than merely presenting the known facts.

A common thread that underpins most of the Blue Whale-related press reports is that they rely on unnamed sources (when they mention sources at all). Only a handful of reports have engaged in actual journalism and sought sources and evidence for the claims being bandied about.