Kiki justice: Clean rail station... court sentenced three for performing "Kiki challenge".

Shyam Sharma

Arnab Ganguly, TT, Aug 10, 2018, Mumbai: A Mumbai court has sentenced three young men, including television actor Shyam Sharma, to clean a railway station for three days as punishment for performing a dangerous stunt involving a running train as part of the viral "Kiki challenge".

Shyam, 24, Nishant Shah, 20, and Dhruv Shah, 23, had posted a five-minute video showing one of them get off a train and dance to Canadian rapper Audrey Drake Graham's song, In My Feelings, while another hangs from the door of the moving train, filming him.

On Wednesday, they were sentenced to visit Vasai station between 11am and 2pm and between 3pm and 5pm from Thursday to Saturday, cleaning the station in the first half and running an awareness campaign against dangerous stunts in the second.

The Kiki challenge had gone viral after YouTube star and Internet comedian Shiggy posted a video of him dancing to In My Feelings on June 30.

Many videos have been posted on social media showing people get out of moving cars and dance to the track on the streets as the driver films them, attracting warnings from authorities in several countries.

No one had been arrested in connection with the Kiki challenge in India before Wednesday, when the Railway Protection Force (RPF) nabbed the trio.

Nishant is the founder of the YouTube channel Funcho where the video was posted five days ago and has since been viewed by 2 million people.

The train stunt lasts just 35 seconds in the video, which portrays how the challenge would be taken up in different parts of India. The police have recovered CCTV footage of the three shooting the stunt at the Virar station.

Sources in the RPF said the three had performed a similar stunt in an ambulance and uploaded it, which helped the railway police nab them. All three were produced in court on Wednesday.

"The magistrate told the three they had done something wrong. Then he told them to create public awareness for the next three days (propagating the idea) that this was wrong and had endangered them and others," a senior RPF officer with Western Railway said.

The "Kiki challenge", often called the "In my feelings challenge", derives its name from the lyrics of the song, which go: "Kiki, do you love me? Are you riding? Say you'll never leave from beside me, 'cause I want you and I need you and I'm down for you always."

Mumbai police had launched an awareness campaign with billboards that said "Kiki is bored of her own challenge. Get into the car" and a social media message saying: "We love your safety and can't leave it to be decided by Kiki."

Central Railway's RPF is looking for another young man who had shot a Kiki challenge video at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station more than a week ago, and against whom a case has been started under the Railways Act.

"The video has been circulated among our officers. The cyber cell of Mumbai police's crime branch is being requested to trace the IP address," a Central Railway official said.