Two teenage girls, suspected to be playing the macabre online game Blue Whale Challenge, were interrogated and counselled in West Bengal, police said on Thursday.
Two Class 9 girls of Barasat Girls High School in North 24 Parganas district’s Barasat were interrogated on Wednesday night after the head mistress of the school contacted the police about their involvement in playing the Blue Whale game, a police officer told IANS.
“The online game was found installed on their mobile phones. They said the game got downloaded after clicking on a link a few weeks ago. However, it’s not clear what stage of the game they were in,” he said.
According to police, the mobile phones of the two girls were seized.
Later, counsellors went to their houses and talked to them about the ill-effects of the game. “They are okay now,” the officer added.
The school authorities claimed that the girls were behaving abnormally as a result of the deadly game and one of them recently cut her hand.
“It seemed the two girls were in a trance. Their behaviour was suspicious since the last few days,” a member of the school’s governing body said.
“One of the girls wounded herself recently and told her friends that she was instructed by a game to cut her hand in order to go to the next level.”
State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee had on Wednesday expressed anxiety over the trend among school students and said access to such games should be immediately barred.
“This is a disturbing trend. What kind of game is it? It should be immediately barred,” Chatterjee had said.
“The schools should also take initiative to stop the students from using mobile phones during school hours.”
The state CID has been campaigning to generate awareness about the perils of the game.
The sudden popularity of the lethal online game in India had forced the government to issue directions to internet giants Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo to immediately remove its links.
