Until the end of July, the Blue Whale Suicide Challenge was not a term the average Indian was familiar with. But as Mumbai recorded the first casualty of the Blue Whale Suicide Challenge in India not more than a couple of weeks ago, those four lethal words have haunted newsrooms and parents of teenagers alike. As recently as Saturday, two new cases have come to light: One of a 14-year-old boy who was on a bus from his home in Solapur to Pune in order to complete a 'task' when he was rescued by the police, and the other of a 13-year-old in Indore who attempted to jump off his school building but was saved by alert classmates and teachers.

Though the boys from Indore and Pune were stopped by vigilant community members, a 15-year-old from West Bengal's Anandpur, West Midnapore was not so lucky. The 10th grade student had gone in for a bath and when he didn't come out after a while, his family broke the bathroom door down only to find his lifeless body. A friend later revealed that he had been 'playing' the Blue Whale Challenge.

The now infamous online trend relates to an online game, believed to have originated in Russia that provokes people into committing suicide after the completion of certain 'challenges'. It claimed as its victim a 14-year-old Mumbai boy who jumped to his death from the ninth floor of his residential complex after allegedly participating in the insidious online game that has already taken the lives of hundreds worldwide.

The now infamous online trend relates to an online game, believed to have originated in Russia that provokes people into committing suicide after the completion of certain 'challenges'. It claimed as its victim a 14-year-old Mumbai boy who jumped to his death from the ninth floor of his residential complex after allegedly participating in the insidious online game that has already taken the lives of hundreds worldwide.

What is the Blue Whale Suicide Challenge?

The Blue Whale Challenge is a 50-day long online game in which participants agree to perform 50 tasks (one per day) that start with seemingly innocuous challenges like watching a horror movie at 3 am, or listening to a particular genre of music. However, the challenges progressively get more and more sinister and culminate in suicide of the participant on the last day by jumping from a tall building. Perhaps the most disquieting aspect of the game is the fact that it requires participants to carve or cut out pieces of skin from their forearm in a certain progression and design that at the end of the challenge resembles a blue whale. While social media platforms are actively fighting against perpetrators of the trend (who are called 'curators' and give out the challenges to those who ask for them), the trend has been hard to filter out of social media and interaction between said 'curators' and victims isn't always confined to those platforms. Youngsters have been reaching out to curators with suggestive hashtags such as #CuratorFindMe or simply with posts hashtagging #BlueWhaleChallenge and are then contacted by an online community of curators, who set the specific challenges.

Where does the Blue Whale Game come from?

Like other aspects of the internet underground, not much is known about the source of the Blue Whale Challenge. According to several reports, the noxious game was allegedly first invented by a psychology student in Russia who devised it with the intention of 'purging' the world of those he deemed 'useless'. It claimed its first victim back in 2015 and has since claimed several lives across dozens of countries.

India's suicide epidemic

It's one thing to look at the Blue Whale Challenge as a problem on its own. However, the root of it lies elsewhere. It goes without saying that the kind of youngsters drawn such challenges on the internet harbour a latent intent for self-harm that springs from the lack of due attention given to mental health in Indian society, especially among children and schools. According to the latest records, the NCRB puts the total number of suicides in India at 1,33,623 (a 17 per cent increase over the 1,13,934 cases it recorded in 2005). Of this figure, major metropolitan cities alone amount for a disproportionate 14 per cent (with more than one-third of the cases coming out of just the top four metros - Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore). A worrying figure, however, is the number of suicides among children below the age of 18, which stands at seven per cent. And of the total number of suicides countrywide, failure in exams and unrequited love alone make up more than 5 per cent. This despite a number of campaigns and efforts by both government and private players to combat stigma and promote mental health awareness.

What's being done and how you can help?

As part of ongoing efforts to combat such disturbing online trends, social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram are actively updating their algorithms to weed them out. In fact, those searching online for suicidal problems or for hashtags like the #bluewhalechallenge are now actively directed towards portals which offer mental health support and are even being reported to concerned authorities. But the chunk of the effort should come from friends and family. So, if you know a friend or a family member who has confided about having suicidal thoughts, there are a number of groups and portals that can offer advice on how to help. Below are some popular portals that you can contact, among others: AASRA: 022 2754 6669 or YourDOST: 080 3951 3412

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