DECODING BLUE WHALE; IS IT REAL???????

The recent unfortunate suicides in India by the teens have been linked to infamous Blue Whale game by media as well as few police agencies. There was huge hue and cry about the game and the government acted with lightening speed to issue directives to the all major social media giants to disable any links providing access to the suicidal trap game. The government’s speedier actions need to be lauded.

There were reports published in many newspapers across India about few deaths which were attributed to the teens playing the deadly blue whale game and reached the last stage of killing themselves but none of them provided any follow up write-up based on facts and carried out their duty towards society of creating awareness and presenting the facts of the matter. Why it could be so? Why no media thought it proper to carry out a follow up story?

It is rumored that there are about 50 tasks provided to the person playing the game and he is required to present evidence (digital) of completing each task and then only he is assigned next task by the admin. Few tasks are hearing loud music, waking up at 4.20 am and visiting Graveyards or Crematories, walking on the railway tracks, inflicting bodily injuries upon self, remaining in isolation from the family etc.

There are acknowledgements from police officers about cause of suicide not being the children’s addiction towards Blue Whale game and neither any digital forensic report is available in public domain which confirms the root cause of death being Blue Whale. If entire reporting or instructing is happening through digitalised communications is it so impossible to track the evidences? It is accepted fact that digital footprints can’t be erased forever then how it is possible that in either of so called Blue Whale suicides no evidence can be gathered by the police in India yet?

And this is the reason which raises suspicion in my mind about the root cause of unfortunate suicides by few teens being attributed to Blue Whale game. I am unable to make out any reason why it was attributed to Blue Whale game and our government acted so hurriedly in imposing the ban on the same.

Why this huge Hue and Cry about one game supposedly developed by some Russian person and allegedly reason behind the teens suicides in Russia? The game is not available on any website not has its links available on any popular social media sites like Facebook/Whatsapp/Twitter nor any search engines like Google and Yahoo have any traces of links leading to Blue Whale game. Even the Russian social networking site VK, which was blamed to facilitate the access of links to Blue Whale game, does not have any notable presence in India nor any students across India which I am interacting with never reported about the knowledge about this game nor CYBER AWARENESS ORGANISATION’S CYBER CRIME HELPLINE received any reports about presence of such deadly game available anywhere.

And that’s why I have every reason to doubt the very existence of this BLUE WHALE game in India. I again reiterate that if government has received some facts then it has every right to ban the game and I also strongly support the same but let those facts come in public domain. Or else students of cyber space like me will remain curious and suspicious about intentions of the government to ban selective websites/links.