An 11 year old boy files PIL in Bombay HC to ban PUBG

Ahad Nizam, an 11-year-old boy from Mumbai filed a Public Interest Litigation through his mother before the Bombay High Court with the deliberation that the popular online game PUBG promotes immoral conduct such as violence, murder, aggression, looting, gaming addiction and cyber bullying, and thus should be banned. The PIL is likely to be forwarded before the bench headed by Chief Justice NH Patil today.

According to the PIL, India does not have an Online Ethics Reviews Committee to check such volatile and violence-oriented content. In fact, PUBG was banned in China for the same reasons as above by an Online Ethics Review Committee there, the PIL states. PUBG is one of the most popular online games in the world as almost 400 million players play the game worldwide. The game itself has been described in the petition.

After learning from media reports that PUBG was banned by the states of Gujarat and Karnataka lately, the petitioner's mother Mariam Nizam, who is also an advocate, wrote to the State Education Minister and the Chief Minister seeking some action. The court should direct the Maharashtra government to ban it, the PIL said.

"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.

The abbreviated lines of the PIL states that "PUBG, the online game has up to one hundred players parachuted onto an island and scavenge for weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves.The available safe area of the game's map decreases in size over time, directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last player or team standing wins the round." 

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had referred to the craze for this game during his interaction with students and parents about exam stress a few days back. The PIL also refers to the reports of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while interacting with students and parents, having come across a mother concerned about her son's addiction to online games. This is when PM Modi asked "Ye PUBG wala hai kya?" This drew a huge reaction from the crowd and the video went viral.

The PIL cited a World Health Organization (WHO) report about 'gaming disorder' and how it has an adverse impact on the child. The PIL seeks directions to the State Education Department to ban PUBG in schools forthwith and the Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India to form an Online Ethics Review Committee to monitor such content from time to time.

PUBG or "Playerunknown's Battlegrounds" is an online multiplayer battle royale game where two or more online partners play on the backdrop of a battlefield. The game is developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole and is based on previous mods that were created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction. 

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