The craze for TikTok claimed yet another life as a youth drowned while shooting for the popular video sharing platform in a lake at the outskirts of Hyderabad. The incident occurred in Dulapally lake in Medchal district on Wednesday evening.
The youth, identified as 24-year-old Narasimha, had got down into the water to pose for a TikTok video. He along with his friend, Prashanth, danced together in the water to the tune of film songs. Later Narasimha alone posed for the video while his friend was recording it on the mobile phone from a distance.
Narasimha accidentally slipped where the water was deep and drowned as he did not know how to swim. Though Prashanth raised an alarm, nobody could come to their rescue.
The police recovered the body on Thursday.
The Chinese video-sharing application has faced flak in recent times as recently as in April this year, when it was removed from the Google Play Store and the iOS app store in India, a day after the Indian government asked that access to the popular app, which had over 230 million downloads in India, be banned.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had asked Google and Apple to block the application after the Supreme Court's refusal to stay an order by the Madras High Court from April 3.
The Madras High Court had, in an ex-parte order, prohibited the download and use of the popular mobile video-sharing app. The government had been directed to prohibit downloading of TikTok and had prohibited the media from telecasting the videos made using TikTok Mobile App.
The court also asked the Centre to answer whether the Union of India will enact a statute, like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, enacted by the United States, to prevent the children becoming cyber or online victims.
IANS inputs