The untimely death of Vignesh has come as a huge blow to his family. All their dreams for him have come crashing down. He was their hope for a good future.
His death has rendered the sacrifice of his elder brother, J. Sathyamoorthy, useless. The youth chose to drop out of school and shoulder the family’s responsibility, taking up a job at a textile shop so that Vignesh could continue his studies.
“Vignesh was always very cheerful. His house had been our hangout for many days in the last few years,” said one of his friends, Pon Sudhan.
A die-hard fan of actor Ajith Kumar, Vignesh could not stand any criticism of the tinsel town hero. “He would get angry with us if we criticised the actor,” he said.
The deceased, who was using a basic model phone earlier, recently bought a smart phone. It is believed that he downloaded the Blue Whale game about a fortnight ago.
Change in behaviour
“Over the last week there was just one change in him: he did not attend my calls. I did not find any other change in his behaviour in the college. Now, in retrospect, I think he was not his usual excited self the last few days.”
Sudhan says that he too tried to download the Blue Whale game on his smartphone, but got some other game instead. “However, I got bored and deleted it,” he added.
His father Jeyamani and mother Daisy Rani were inconsolable as they waited for the post-mortem to be conducted at the government hospital in Tirumangalam. “I know he was playing some game. But, whenever I asked him, he showed some cartoon character to convince me. I never thought he was playing a deadly game,” his mother cried.
His father was shattered as the dream and joy of producing the family’s first graduate came to an abrupt end.
Sathyamoorthy said he noticed his brother slipping out of the bed sometimes after everyone in the family retired for the night at around 11 p.m. “I waited for his return and asked him, but he said nothing.”
When Madurai District Collector K. Veera Raghava Rao tried to console the bereaved family, the parents wanted him to bring to book the administrators of the Blue Whale game, so that there would be no further victims.