An eleven-year-old boy moved the Bombay High Court Thursday seeking a ban on popular mobile game 'PUBG'. Ahad Nizam, who filed the public interest litigation through his mother, said the game promotes violence, aggression and cyber-bullying. The court should direct the Maharashtra government to ban it, the PIL said. Earlier, a students union from Jammu and Kashmir as well as National Commission for Protection of Child Rights had also asked for a ban on the game. Apart from Gujarat government, which recently asked the schools in the state to ban PUBG, no other government agency has announced a ban on the game until now.
"The petition has also sought a direction to the central government to form an Online Ethics Review Committee for periodical checking of such violence-oriented online content," petitioner's lawyer Tanveer Nizam said.
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It is likely to come up for hearing before a division bench headed by Chief Justice N H Patil. PUBG or 'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' is an online game where 100 players fight it out in free for all combat where the sole survivor wins.
While the PIL mentions PUBG, it's safe to say it's referring to PUBG Mobile, this is the version of the game on Android and iOS that's the most popular in India, to the point where it was name-dropped by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his interaction with students and parents about exam stress a few days back.
PUBG Mobile is developed, published, and distributed by the Chinese Internet giant Tencent. Outside of China, the game has amassed over 200 million downloads and has 30 million daily active users.
