A 13-year-old boy on Thursday tried to jump off the third floor of his school in Indore, but fellow students thwarted his attempt.
The boy is a student of Class 7 at Chamali Devi Public School in Rajendra Nagar.
He climbed the railing of a balcony on the third floor of the building and tried to jump off, but other students pulled him back, Additional Superintendent of Police Rupesh Kumar Dwivedi told PTI.
The students informed their teachers, who approached the police.
“Initial investigation suggests that the boy had been playing the Blue Whale game on his father’s cellphone for the last couple of days,” Dwivedi said. “We think he was tense in the last couple of days, thinking about committing suicide to accomplish the final 50th task of the game,” said the police officer.
However, a Times of India report says the police hasn’t reached any conclusion as the boy’s body doesn’t bear the 50 cuts (one for each challenge) participants are supposed to make, the pattern of which finally resembles a blue whale. But, the police told TOI that the boy has admitted that it was his 50th dare.
Police are thinking of taking the boy to a psychiatrist for counselling, the ASP said.
School principal Sangeeta Poddar said the boy was too frightened after his thwarted suicide attempt. He told the teachers that he had been playing Blue Whale game for the last couple of days.
News 18 reports that the boy was promised a sum of Rs 2 crore on successful completion of the game.
Not the first case in India
The macabre game, which is said to have originated in Russia, is suspected to have claimed a teenager’s life in Mumbai recently.
The class 9 student, apparently a participant in Blue Whale `challenge’, jumped to his death from the fifth floor of a building in suburban Andheri in Mumbai on July 29.
The game starts by asking participants via social media to draw a whale on a piece of paper, then carve a whale figure on their body, and then gives other tasks such as watching horror movies alone or waking up at unearthly hours.
The tasks also involve self-harm, while the final challenge is to commit suicide.
(Feature image source: Reuters)