Cuttack, Sept. 11: Orissa High Court today directed the CID-crime branch to file an affidavit in response to a PIL seeking a ban on the Blue Whale Challenge, which has triggered suicides across the country.

The PIL was filed yesterday by a 38-year-old high court lawyer seeking the court's direction to the crime branch to either block the game or disable access to it.

'After preliminary hearing, the division bench of Chief Justice Vineet Saran and Justice B.R. Sarangi posted the PIL to September 18 for hearing along with the action-taken report of the crime branch,' advocate-petitioner Shivsankar Mohanty said.

The online game derives its curious name from the beaching tendency of the world's largest animal. The challenge, which ends in provoking one to commit suicide, has rattled parents worldwide after several deaths.

The problem, however, is the fact that it is not a downloadable game, application or software that can be blocked. It is a social media phenomenon, accessible via networks of secretive groups.

The game, which involves 50 tasks over 50 days and culminates in suicide, is played on social media apps such as Instagram, online gaming groups and message boards, said cyber experts.

Today, ace sprinter Dutee Chand attributed the death of her cousin Utakal Keshari Guin, 24, who died in a road accident recently, to the Blue Whale game.

In a post online, she said, 'Suspecting his activities and the circumstances surrounding the accident, I checked all his posts on Facebook from where I got to know that he had been playing Blue Whale.'

'The court has directed the crime branch to submit a report stating steps taken by its cyber crime wing under the Information Technology Act, 2000, which empowers it to stop such lethal games,' the petitioner, Mohanty, said.

In his petition, Mohanty said he had made a representation to the crime branch's additional director-general 'to take immediate steps to remove or block or disable access to the lethal game' on August 29.

'But no action has been taken for which the Blue Whale Challenge is still available on the Internet,' the petition alleged, expressing concern that the game had caused panic among parents across Odisha.

The petition also pointed out that the Union ministry of electronics and information technology had directed different intermediaries to remove links of the online game, but the notification was not in the public domain.

'Taking note, the court asked the central government counsel to produce a copy of the notification before it during the next hearing,' Mohanty said.

According to the petition, the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police commissioner had issued an advisory to parents to prevent their children from falling prey to the game two days after a Class X student of Sambalpur district committed suicide on August 23, allegedly linked to the Blue Whale Challenge. The commissioner issued a second advisory prescribing precautionary measures for children, parents and teachers a day after Cuttack police rescued a private engineering college student who had crossed several stages of the challenge on September 5 and handed him over to his parents after counselling.

In his second advisory, the commissioner had observed that although the competent authority had asked companies such as Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo to immediately take down any links leading to the game, it was unclear how these companies would make the game inaccessible. 'This clearly shows the helplessness of the police,' the petition alleged, expressing concern that the game was turning out to be a death trap for participants, most of whom were minors.