'Blue Whale' cases: CID uploads awareness video

Kolkata: In the wake of the Blue Whale challenge, the online dare game that has gone viral and has even been blamed for a spate of suicides among minors across the country, the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has uploaded a video of 1.13 minutes in its Facebook page for an awareness drive against the game.

"We have stated in the awareness video that the youth are getting trapped thinking that the game will help them fight stress and the criminals are taking advantage of this factor," a senior CID official said. The video concludes with the message that Blue Whale is not something that gets somebody out of depression but it leads to the path

of suicide.

In recent times, there has been two incidents in the state with allegations of Blue Whale game linked to it.

While a boy from village Anandapur in West Midnapore committed suicide jumping from the roof, another youth from Garbeta in the same district had a lucky shave on Thursday. The video begins with the basic introduction to the Blue Whale game and mentions that the final step tells a person to jump from the roof of a building to commit suicide. The video further offers lessons on the traits in their child that parents should keep a track on. They should see whether he/she is behaving in a strange manner, hiding things, remaining hooked to social media, hardly talking with anybody, talking with unknown persons, wandering on the roof of the house at night and has cut marks on his body.

In a series of advice to the parents, the video instructs the elders to behave in a friendly manner with the child and try to know whether he/she is suffering from any sort of anxiety.

It advises that if there is any abnormality in the behavior then they should consult a psychiatrist.