A Class-VII student, a fan of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) stunts, allegedly choked to death in his Duttabad home while apparently imitating a wrestling move with a nylon belt.
Parents of 13-year-old Bikash Sardar said the boy had tied one end of the belt to a bamboo shaft that ran across their ceiling and the other end around his neck. He was found hanging between the bed and the wall when his parents found him.
¡°He was a huge fan of WWE and was always hooked on to the cellphone, watching videos. He may have tried to imitate stunts he had seen in the videos with the belt and suffocated to death. We don¡¯t think he committed suicide. It must have been an accident,¡± said his father Sunil, who works as a mason.
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With WWE¡¯s annual event Wrestlemania around the corner, YouTube feeds are flooded with video suggestions for any average freestyle wrestling viewer. Sunil said the last video Bikash had been watching was a tag-team match between the teams of John Cena and CM Punk against Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose.
¡°He was possibly trying a stunt with the belt around his neck. He may not have realized that he could choke. Had it been a suicide, the boy would have climbed to the bamboo shaft using a stool or a chair,¡± said a neighbour.
According to police, Bikash had returned from school around 5pm on Thursday. His parents, who had gone to the bank, returned around 5.45pm to find their son hanging in his room. ¡°Seeing his feet dangling in the air, my wife almost fainted. I brought him down with the help of a neighbour, but he was already dead. I passed out from grief,¡± Sunil said.
Neighbours took the boy to Bidhannagar Subdivisional Hospital where he was declared ¡°dead on arrival¡±. The hospital authorities alerted the cops. ¡°It is difficult to ascertain if it was a case of suicide or accident. But we have sent the body for post-mortem and have started an unnatural death case,¡± said an officer.
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Bikash¡¯ friends and family members said he had always been a fan of professional wrestling and would constantly watch wrestling videos on his father¡¯s cellphone.
TOI had access to the phone and found multiple WWE videos in the YouTube search and viewing history, and some were even saved on a playlist. Neighbours said they had often seen Bikash imitating WWE moves.
Psychologists said some children are more impulsive than others, lacking a sense of dangers that could be inflicted by themselves. This is where parents need to counsel them properly.
¡°We need to educate the children that what they see in the virtual world is often staged. Only proper counselling can deter children from such acts,¡± said psychiatrist Jai Ranjan Ram.
Shows like WWE usually come with a disclaimer cautioning viewers against imitating the stunts shown, but these are often ignored. ¡°Parents need to keep a check on the kind of things their children watch and stay alert about any change in behaviour. If needed, parents should monitor what kids watch videos and inform them about the ill effects,¡± said psychiatrist Siladitya Roy.
However, WWE released an official statement that such a move was not part of any of its programs.
"While WWE offers its condolences to Bikash Sardar¡¯s family, he could not have been imitating a WWE manoeuvre because tying a belt or anything around one's neck doesn't relate to anything seen on WWE programming,¡± the statement said.