New Delhi, Oct. 27 (PTI): The Supreme Court today asked Doordarshan to produce a 10-minute educational show on the perils of virtual dare games like Blue Whale Challenge within a week and directed the Centre to ensure that children do not fall prey to such dangerous activities online.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said “lonely” and “depressed” children are usually attracted towards such dangerous games and asked the Centre to take steps to ensure that no such deaths recur.
“How you (Centre) will do it, we are not concerned. But you must do it,” the bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra and comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said, adding that such online games posed danger to life and they must be “contained”.
The top court said the educational TV programme should be shown not only by the public broadcaster Doordarshan but all private channels on prime time.
Terming visual medium as being most “effective”, it said “Doordarshan shall prepare a programme in consultation with the Ministries of Women and Child Development and the Human Resource Development within one week to educate children about the evils of Blue Whale game so that they are not involved in that game.”
Additional Solicitor General P S Narasimha, appearing for the Centre, said around 28 cases relating to such games have been reported so far in the country and the agencies are probing them. He sought three weeks time to file a reply.
The law officer said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has set up a committee to deal with the issue and information was being sought from various service providers and steps would be taken to ensure that such incidents do not recur.
The bench granted three weeks to the Centre to file a detailed affidavit indicating steps taken by the concerned ministries including the Ministry of Home Affairs and fixed the PIL for further hearing on November 20.
The bench was hearing a PIL filed by lawyer Sneha Kalita, seeking framing of guidelines to regulate and monitor virtual digital on line games like Blue Whale and other life- threatening online games.
Earlier, the court had asked the government to set up a panel of experts to block virtual dare games like Blue Whale Challenge which has allegedly led to several suicidal deaths.
It had also sought the response on the plea seeking to firewall such life threatening and violent games existing in the cyber world like ‘Choking game’, ‘Salt and Ice Challenge’, ‘Fire Challenge’, ‘Cutting challenge’, ‘Eyeball challenge’ and ‘Human Embroidery game’.
Firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorised access to or from a private network by controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic.
The PIL had sought directions to intermediaries, particularly network service providers (NSPs), internet service providers (ISP), Web Hosting Service Providers, cyber cafes to observe due diligence and take steps to inform all users of computer resources “not to host, display, upload and share any virtual digital games which is grossly harmful and life threatening and morally degrading.”
It also sought a direction to the government to improve “the filtering services at Indian Shores like having firewalls in each Cable landing Station or having DNS Blocking wall with brain scanner (at underground submarine optical fibre cable connecting the operators abroad) to be installed at Indian shores to prevent and filter the virtual online games which are harmful and life threatening and morally degrading.”
Cable landing stations are locations where a submarine telecommunications cables and submarine power cables make a landfall. A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean.
