Sept. 15: Calcutta High Court today asked the Centre to let it know in a week's time what steps have been taken to block the Internet link of the Blue Whale Challenge.

The division bench of acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty also directed the state to file an affidavit in seven days stating details about the incidents that have occurred across Bengal because of the online game that ends in the player committing suicide.

The order followed a petition by a social organisation working against cyber crime.

Blue Whale is an online "game" that involves a series of tasks or challenges assigned to players by administrators over 50 days. Some of the challenges are innocuous, such as getting up early, but get riskier over time. The final challenge requires the player to commit suicide. The game has allegedly driven several students to commit suicide across the world.

The alleged suicide of a 14 -year-old boy in Mumbai who jumped off a building and a 15-year-old boy in West Midnapore who suffocated himself in a plastic bag have been linked to the Blue Whale challenge.

Moving the petition on behalf of the Ayushman Foundation, advocate Bibhas Chatterjee demonstrated before the court how the game is played and how students, most of them teenagers, were at risk.

"Only the central government can block the link to the deadly game. The court's immediate intervention is much- needed. It should ask both the state and central governments to take proper steps," Chatterjee said.

Appearing for the Centre, additional solicitor general Kaushik Chanda said steps have already been taken to block the link.

The Centre has already directed Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo, to remove links to the online game. The Union ministry of electronics and information technology wrote to the Internet companies after the two recent suicides in Mumbai and West Midnapore.

The state's advocate-general, Kishore Dutta, admitted that the state government was worried and mulling ways to prevent teenagers from playing the game. "Experts are keeping watch. The institutions have also been asked to take steps," he said.

Several city schools have been trying to devise ways to keep students safe without causing panic, or, ending up giving more publicity to the potentially dangerous game.

The court fixed the matter for hearing on September 24.