Three Indian sisters who jumped to their deaths after their parents confiscated their phone have been pictured.
Sibling Pakhi, 12, Prachi, 14, and Vishika, 16, gathered at their ninth-floor balcony in Bharat City, Ghaziabad, at around 2.15am on Wednesday before jumping one by one in a tragedy that has rocked the country.
Local reports claimed the girls’ screams were so loud they woke their parents and neighbours. But by the time the parents broke down the door, it was too late.
The devastated mother and father later found an eight-page suicide note in a pocket diary, which included chilling messages about their love of Korea and their beliefs that their parents were attempting to quell their obsession.
‘How will you make us leave Korean? Korean was our life, so how dare you make us leave our life? You didn’t know how much we loved them. Now you have seen the proof. Now we are convinced that Korean and K-Pop are our life,’ the note read.
‘We didn’t love you and family as much as we loved the Korean actor and the K-Pop group. Korean was our life.’ The girls had even taken on Korean names before their deaths – Cindy, Maria, and Aliza.
An official had earlier said that their father had lately imposed restrictions on the girls’ use of mobile phones. They were also said to be obsessed with gaming.
They left a list of other art and culture forms that they were obsessed with, including Thai, Japanese, Chinese, and English music and movies.
Cartoons such as Peppa Pig, Elsa, and Ariel, as well as survival games including Evil Game and Poppy Playtime, were also listed.
In the note, the girls claimed they wanted to instill the same obsessions in their fourth sister, Devu, but their parents would not allow it.
‘You introduced her to Bollywood, which we hated more than our lives,’ the note read.
The girls, who dropped out of school two years ago, explained they felt offended when they were asked to ‘educate’ their sister, instead of sharing their passion for Korea with her.
‘We felt bad about this, so we made a decision and made Devu our enemy, because no one at home allowed her to be like us,’ the note continued.
‘So, from that day on, we separated Devu from ourselves and told her that we are Korean and K-Pop, and you are Indian and Bollywood’.
Their obsession was so extreme that they mentioned their disgust at the thought of marrying an Indian man when they grew up.
‘We liked and loved a Korean, but you wanted to make us marry an Indian. We never expected anything like this. So that’s why we are committing suicide,’ the note read.
It was later reported that two of the sisters may have fallen accidentally while attempting to hold the third sister back.
According to Indian media, the young girls had allegedly become addicted to a Korean love game called ‘We are not Indians’ during the Covid19 pandemic.
The game is believed to have given users different tasks, the last of which was allegedly dying by suicide. It also provided Korean names, which the children began using.
Their devastated father, Chetan Kumar, described what he had read.
‘They said: “Papa, sorry, Korea is our life, Korea is our biggest love, whatever you say, we cannot give it up. So we are killing ourselves”,’ Kumar said.
‘This should not happen to any parent or child,’ he added.
Television reports in India on Wednesday morning captured the bodies of the young girls on the ground outside the building as their mother wailed and a crowd of shocked neighbours watched on.
‘When we reached the scene, we confirmed that three girls, daughters of Chetan Kumar, had died after jumping from the building,’ said Atul Kumar Singh, Assistant Commissioner of Police.
Visuals from their home revealed jottings on a wall in the girls’ bedroom, including: ‘I am very very alone’ and ‘make me a hert of broken (sic)’.
Later on Wednesday, a resident, Arun Singh, claimed he witnessed the incident and told NDTV that as he was going to sleep, he saw someone sitting on a balcony ready to jump.
‘I couldn’t figure out if it was a man or a woman since I was standing at a distance. I called my wife and said that someone was trying to jump and I should do something,’ he told the Indian news site.
‘My partner suggested that it must be a marital dispute, I thought it was a couple; a man trying to jump while the wife was trying to stop him,’ he added.
According to Singh, another girl then emerged, attempting to pull in the person sitting on the railing, and was successful in her attempt.
But just minutes later, the person climbed onto the ledge again.
‘A small girl came and hugged the person sitting on the railing tightly. Before I could get my phone and call someone to stop the person from jumping, all three – the person sitting on the railing and two girls trying to pull them down – fell off the balcony,’ Singh recalled.
‘One of them seemed determined to jump while the two others were trying to save them, but all three fell headfirst,’ he added.
The neighbour ran to the ground floor and called the police and an ambulance, which, according to him, took an hour to arrive.
‘In a country where pizza, burgers, and groceries are delivered in 10 minutes, it took an ambulance an hour to arrive. It is a sad reality,’ Singh told the site.
He claimed he made 10 to 15 calls. Singh did not know the girls or their family personally.
