Madurai: Several views relating to the dangerous Blue Whale online game menace were expressed before the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on Thursday, which suo motu took up the issue in view of the larger public interest last week.
The amicus curiae appointed by the court argued that the government does not have legal provision to control the spreading of the game through social media.
“In the US, there is Cyber Information Sharing Act. Under that Act, a person should share information, which is useful to crackdown cyber crime cases. Such kind of legislation is absent in our country,” said Amicus curiae V Rajendran.
Seconding his opinion, another amicus curiae K P S Palanivelrajan argued while Internet Service Providers operating in India were amenable under the Indian Law, the social media were not amenable because they have headquarters in US.
He requested the court to issue direction to the Centre to bring in mechanism to help the parents to monitor and control the Apps, which the children were downloading through Internet.
Senior CBCID officials who made personal appearance before a division bench comprising Justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan admitted that since the service providers were operating from abroad, they were at the mercy of them in obtaining information.
The officials also informed the court that so far seven deaths were reported due to blue whale and the police managed to rescue the victims in the four cases.
The assistant solicitor general V Kathirvelu said the central government has communicated with the management of Internet companies to block the blue whale game links. Google India had response positively, he said.
The public prosecutor appearing for the state government said that following the court direction, they were creating awareness among the students.
Recording the submissions, Justice Sasidharan said that he would pass interim order on September 11.
The court took up this issue, taking cognizance of Newspaper reports on Blue Whale Game induced suicide of a college student J Vignesh (19) from Vilacherry, Madurai on August 30.
