(Image source from: WKRG.com)

19-Year Old College Student Commits Suicide Due To Blue Whale Challenge:- A 19-year-old college student hanged himself to death when he was alone at home, at Mottamalai area near Madurai on Wednesday evening. The deadly game, ‘Blue Whale Challenge’ is suspected to be the reason behind his death.

The police suspect that since ‘Blue Whale’ was painted on his hand, the victim may have played the game, took the last dare and killed himself. The student is identified as Vickstown alias Vicky, a second year B.Com student in Mannar Thirumalai Naicker College.

“He had drawn a whale picture on his hand and written Blue Whale below it using a refill pen,” said the police source.

(Image Source: Deccanchronicle.com)

The police said, the student’s father Jayamani who returned home after work around 4:30 pm, found his son hanging using a saree. The body of the youth has been sent for post-mortem. He also left a brief letter stating that “blue whale is not a game but a disaster”.

What is the Blue Whale Challenge?

The Blue Whale Challenge - a dare-based “game” that requires participants to complete 50 tasks in 50 days, and the ultimate task being committing suicide by jumping of a high-rise. It originated in Russia in 2013. The creator of the challenge, Philipp Budeikin (22), was arrested in May and sentenced to three years in prison. He had confessed, in an interview, that he deliberately incited 17 teenagers into committing suicide.

Philipp said that he was eliminating people ‘who do not represent any value, cause harm or will cause harm to the society’ from the face of the Earth.

The Blue Whale Challenge, when it originated, had a curator who gets in touch with people who are curious about the game and posts from their social media accounts asking to be found. They use different hashtags for this purpose. Once the curator stalks those who posts with these hashtags and realizes they are vulnerable, they talk to these people, mostly teenagers, in private messages.

Teenagers take up the challenge to prove a point to themselves and to their peers. Many think they will stop taking the tasks if the curator asks them to do dangerous deeds like jumping into a river despite not knowing how to swim, but usually they do not succeed in avoiding the urge to do the task.

Tasks range from listening to certain songs at 4 20 AM, isolating oneself, cutting oneself, traveling alone, watching horror clips, movies curators send at 4 20 AM, talking to fellow players over Skype, spending time in cemeteries, accepting one is about to die, accepting the date the curator says one will die on, and finally jumping off a high-rise killing oneself.

SUPRAJA