Young minds in Blue Whale trap: Two more fall prey to challenge

SERAMPORE/BELDA/HOWRAH: Blue Whale, an online challenge developed in Russia, appears to have ensnared children, even from the remote corners of Bengal. Two days after a headmistress of a school in North 24 Parganas detected and counselled two Class IX girls who had become addicted to the notorious challenge, two more cases were reported from Howrah and Hooghly, pointing to the evil that has embedded itself in inquisitive, young minds across the state.
Another problem that presented itself on Friday was the threat of boys and girls imitating the challenges for instant stardom among peers. A Class-VIII student from West Midnapore's Belda, who hails from a poor family of day-labourers and doesn't even have access to a smartphone, used a needle to draw the whale's image simply because his elder brother told him to do so.
The same day , two candida tes for next year's Madhyamik examination -one in Hooghly's Serampore and another in Howrah's Shyampur -were found with a whale-shaped cut marks on their arms. They had used blades and needles to etch the image on their flesh.While the teen from Howrah had just been initiated into the game by its administrators, the boy from Serampore had progressed to level 11 of the challenge.
At Serampore, it was Class-X students of Mahesh Sri Ramkrishna Ashram Vidyapith who rang the alarm bells after they found a fellow classmate carrying a knife in his bag. While confiscating the knife, the class teacher no ticed cuts on the teen's left hand resembling the blue whale image and alerted school headmaster Suman Chakraborty, who immediately summoned the student's father and police.
The father later said that he had noticed his son behaving unnaturally for the last couple of days. In the face of constant questioning, the boy admitted he had reached level 11of the challenge. Serampore police seized the boy's mobile phone and asked the father to take his son for counselling.
In Howrah's Shyampur, another Class-X student raised the suspicion of his fellow classmates and teachers when he reached school on Friday with his left arm bandaged.When he was made to unwrap the bandage, cut marks resembling a whale with the words `B.whale' appeared.The student admitted he had used a needle to make the marks. Howrah SP Gaurab Sharma said, “We deleted the Blue Whale app from the boy's mobile phone and counselled him.“