Another UP boy falls prey to Blue Whale challenge

Lucknow: Yet another child falls victim to the dreaded Blue Whale game in Lucknow. A 14-year-old boy was found hanging in his room on Thursday in Indira Nagar. This is the second such incident in Lucknow as a fortnight ago, a 13-year- old boy had committed suicide while playing the game in Hamirpur district.

According to reports, the deceased’s friends said that he was playing the dreaded game on his mobile for the past two weeks and was tense.

Aditya Vardhan Singh, who belongs to Hardoi, had shifted to Lucknow with his mother Aruna for better education. He was studying in Nirmala Convent School and was to take an examination on Friday.

“Since the past one week, he had been on his mobile phone till late in the night and we never realised that he could be playing the Blue Whale challenge,” his father Rupesh Kumar Singh, an advocate, said on Friday.

His mother said that Aditya did not possess any personal mobile but for the past few days, he was using her phone to play some online game.

It is noteworthy that last week, the UP police had issued directives to chiefs of all districts to ban the game. DGP Sulkhan Singh had asked officials to make efforts to contact school authorities and ensure that children are prevented from playing the game. Taking cognizance of the suicides, the Union information technology ministry had also directed social media giants to remove links of the controversial game from their sites.