Boy found hanging in Kerala; TikTok suspected

A 15-year old boy was found dead at his house at Kodungalloor in Thrissur district in central Kerala, allegedly following a TikTok video shoot.

Adwaith, the lone son of Kishore and Sreeja, was found hanging using a shawl from the handrails of the staircase of their house at Methala in Kodungalloor on Tuesday. His parents who were away from the house in the evening noticed Adwaith hanging when they returned by night. He had died by that time.

Local police said that on a subsequent search in the house, it was found that the hanging scene was being shot using a mobile phone camera. Hence it was suspected that he met with the tragedy while shooting the video.

Police sources said that though there were allegations that the video was being shot for uploading on Tik Tok, a video-sharing app, those aspects were yet to be confirmed. Prima facia, it seems that the boy did it as an act of mischief through live streaming to threaten his friends. But he seemed to have slipped and could not touch his feet on the ground.

Meanwhile, considering the reach of Tik Tok, the Kerala Police also recently started exploring it to spread videos as well as to keep a watch over the spread of undesirable videos.

A launch video of the Kerala police received about 1.5 lakh followers within days. The Kerala Police had earlier made use of social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook in an effective manner for spreading awareness messages.