3 sisters in India, aged 12, 14 & 16, commit suicide after access to K-content & online games restricted

Three sisters in their teens reportedly committed suicide after their access to Korean content and online games was restricted.

Police said they were "highly addicted" to an online Korean game and believed themselves to be Korean, according to Hindustan Times.

The incident

The girls, aged 12, 14 and 16, jumped from their ninth-floor apartment on Feb. 4 in Ghaziabad, a city on the outskirts of New Delhi.

According to the police, at around 12:30am that Wednesday, the three girls were with their mothers before they went into the apartment’s puja room, a space used for prayer and meditation.

Investigators said they locked the room from the inside, used a chair to climb out of a window, and jumped one after another.

The Indian Express reported that the girls were later found at the foot of their building by members of the public and security guards after they were jolted awake by what was described as several loud noises in rapid succession just after 2am.

The noises were caused by the girls hitting the ground and protrusions from lower floors as they fell.

They were later declared dead at a nearby hospital.

Family dynamics

Police said the girls lived in a rented flat with their father, Chetan Kumar, his two wives, a maternal aunt and two other siblings, The Indian Express reported.

Officers added that Kumar was under severe financial stress and had debts of about 2 crore rupees (around S$282,350).

An officer said Kumar’s two wives are sisters. Two of the girls who died were born to one wife, while the third was born to the other.

The girls became addicted to online gaming after the Covid-19 pandemic. Whenever their family tried to take away their phones, they would collude to get them back, police said.

Eight-page "suicide note" recovered

According to the The Indian Express, the police recovered an eight-page "suicide note" that suggested the girls had planned their deaths.

In the note, the girls alleged they were beaten by their parents, who threatened to marry them off, which they found unacceptable as they "[loved] Koreans".

"Should we live in this world to be beaten by you? No, death would be better," the girls allegedly wrote.

"At the very mention of marriage, we get tense. We like and love Koreans, and we can never accept marriage with Indian men."

Police said the note was addressed to their father, in which the girls apologised but insisted they could not give up what they described as "Korean culture".

"Korean is our life, how did you even dare to make us leave our life? You don’t know how much we love them, now you have seen the proof," they allegedly wrote, adding that K-pop and Korean culture defined who they were.

The note also listed names of several cartoons, online games and other Korean, Chinese, Thai, and Japanese dramas, police said.

Investigators said the sisters had become so deeply immersed in K-dramas and K-pop that they abandoned their given names and adopted the monikers Aliza, Cindy and Maria, which they used consistently among themselves, Hindustan Times reported.

A senior police officer familiar with the investigation said the girls had "completely internalised" those alternate identities. "In the note, they repeatedly wrote that no one in the family understood their love for Korea."

One line in the note reportedly read: "Will you stop us from going to Korea?"

Escalating tensions at home

In an interview with The Indian Express, Kumar revealed that the girls had stopped attending school at least three years ago.

The eldest left school in Class 7, equivalent to Secondary 1, while the other two dropped out in Classes 6 and 5, corresponding to Primary 6 and Primary 5 respectively.

Kumar said they had struggled academically and hence refused to return to school. He later enrolled them in a private coaching centre, but they stopped attending after getting into an argument with the teacher.

He also revealed that he had taken away their mobile phones three days before the incident and told them to stop watching Korean content.

"They were crazy about them," Kumar said. "They tried to speak like the characters in those dramas, behave like them, imitated them."

He added that he had deleted a YouTube channel the girls had created three months earlier, which greatly upset them.

He also reportedly sold the mobile phone which the girls had used extensively to watch K-dramas, likely due to financial stress, Hindustan Times reported.

"This angered them deeply," an officer said. "Their online world was everything to them."

Helplines

If you or someone you know is in mental distress, here are some hotlines you can call to seek help, advice, or just a listening ear:

National mindline.sg Hotline: 1771 (24 hours)

National mindline.sg WhatsApp: 66691771 (24 hours)

SOS 24-hour Hotline: 1-767

Singapore Association for Mental Health: 1800-283-7019

Centre for Domestic Employees: 1800 225 5233 (24 hours)

Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Social Support and Training: 1800 339 4357 (24 hours)

HOME: 1800 797 7977 or +65 9787 3122 (WhatsApp / Viber / SMS)

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