HC wants Govt, internet giants to Reply to plea on Blue Whale

The Delhi high court on Tuesday asked the Centre, Facebook, Google and Yahoo to respond to a plea seeking removal of links to the Blue Whale challenge from the internet.

The Blue Whale challenge, which has claimed many lives in India and abroad, is a game in which a player is given certain tasks to complete in 50 days. The final task is to commit suicide.

The high court directed Google, Yahoo and Facebook to submit a report with regard to steps taken in pursuance to Centre’s direction to ban the game.

Earlier this month, the government had directed Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo to immediately remove the links of the game.

The Central Board of Secondary Education too has issued a circular, asking all the schools to install effective firewalls, filtering and monitoring software mechanisms in all the computers and regularly review filtering and blocking policies and procedures.

In the petition before the high court, advocate Gurmeet Singh has claimed that “the public at large and especially children are constantly trying to play the game and have succumbed to injuries and even died”.

Delhi Police counsel Sanjoy Ghose said the cyber security cell was active and the Centre has also issued a direction.