In southern Gujarat’s Dang district, it is a criminal offence to click a selfie. Officials said the move was made to curb accidents that are often associated with attempts to take selfies. The district’s Additional Collector T.D. Damor said this kind of stricture has been in place here for the last two or three years and now stands extended through a fresh notification issued earlier in June.
“People, especially youngsters, in their attempt to click a good selfie, can go to any extent and harm themselves. Many cases of people falling into a gorge or being swept away in water current were recorded in the past. In some cases, people also died while many got injured,” Damor told PTI.
“The aim behind the decision is to stop accidents which claimed lives of some people in the past and also injured many,” Damor added.
Dang is popular among tourists with its hills and waterfalls. One of its hill stations, Saputara, saw the death of a man who had fallen into a gorge while trying to taking a selfie in 2018. A few months later, another person fell into the nearby Gira waterfalls, with the finger of suspicion once again pointing to an attempted selfie.
India recorded the highest number of deaths due to selfies between 2011 and 2017, according to a study by the US National Library of Medicine.
From October 2011 to November 2017, there have been 259 deaths while clicking selfies. The mean age was 22.94 years. About 72.5 percent of the total deaths occurred in males and 27.5 per cent in females,” the study had found.
(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)
