Family dynamics, K-fixation converge in Gzb girls' fatal fall

Three sisters aged 11, 14 and 16, obsessed with Korean culture and influenced by a task-based online game, died by suicide by jumping off a modified window of their ninth floor flat in a Ghaziabad high-rise in the early hours of Wednesday.

- Peeyush Khandelwal, Hemani Bhandari and Jignasa Sinha

Or did they?

The grisly deaths of the three minor half-sisters at 2am on Wednesday left behind a puzzling trail of questions that were only compounded by their father’s and the police’s contradictory statements, a final message scribbled in blue ink on a piece of glass, shocking revelations in a eight-page “diary entry”, the financial duress that allegedly weighed heavily on the family, and the repeated appearance of Korean culture in the narrative.

Ghaziabad Police and eyewitness Arun Kumar confirmed that the three sisters who allegedly dropped out of school three years ago as the financial situation of the family deteriorated - were seen on the ledge of the window around 2am.

“One person was swinging by the edge of a window on the 9th floor, and being held on to by two others. Within minutes, all of them fell in front of his eyes.

When I rushed downstairs, I saw that there were three children," said Kumar, who lives on the 10th floor in a tower that faces the girls' flat.

They were taken to a hospital in Loni but were declared dead on arrival at a government hospital in Loni. No first information report was filed in the case at the time of going to print, and inquest proceedings were initiated, said Nimish Patil, DCP of trans-Hindon zone.

"The autopsy was conducted by a panel of doctors and the process was completed by Wednesday evening. The report is awaited and the three bodies have been handed over to the family," deputy commissioner of police Nimish Patil said.

Police said the girls lived with their 38-year-old father, who used to work as a stock market trader but recently suffered financial losses. The mother of the 16-year-old and the mother of the 11 and 14-year-old - they were sisters-lived in the house.