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'One jumped, others fell trying to save': Witness recalls Ghaziabad sisters' suicide
Amid the ongoing probe into the incident, an eyewitness recounted the moment he saw the girls falling from the ninth floor or the building.
Three sisters, aged 16, 14 and 12, are said to have died by suicide after jumping from a high-rise in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad. Their deaths have drawn focus to their “addiction” to a Korean mobile game and the amount of influence Korean culture had on them.
Amid the ongoing probe into the incident, an eyewitness recounted the moment he saw the girls falling from the ninth floor of the building.
Arun Kumar, the eyewitness, said that he found something suspicious as all three sisters were sitting atop the glass of the balcony at around 2 am. “Before I could understand anything, they jumped. From what I saw, it appeared that one of the sisters planned to jump and the other two fell trying to save her,” Kumar told news agency ANI.
Sisters had locked themselves up
The girls' father was a forex trader, as reported by HT earlier. While the sixteen-year-old was born to the trader's first wife, the other two were born to his second wife.
According to police, the girls were with their mothers on the night of the incident. A little after 12:30 am, the three locked themselves up inside a puja room and later used a chair to take turns to jump out, assistant police commissioner Atul Kumar Singh said.
"They all died on the spot. The guards and locals on the ground floor woke up hearing the loud noise of girls falling, and even their family members on the ninth floor woke up. Police were informed, and bodies were sent for autopsy,” the official added.
The girls left behind a “crying caricature” and a sorry message for their father in a diary, indiatoday.in quoted the contents of the note.
Korean mobile game in focus
While the exact reason behind the extreme step remains unknown, the sisters' “high addiction” to a Korean mobile game is now in focus after their deaths. According to police, the sisters were highly influenced by the Korean culture, even thought of themselves as “Korean princesses” and considered themselves “Koreans, not Indians”.
It has not been clarified which Korean mobile game did they play but police said they would analyse the girls' mobile phones.
“It is an online task-based game that they were addicted to. They were not attentive to their studies... the 16-year-old was still studying in class 4. This situation developed after the Covid-19 pandemic...they got addicted to online gaming,” said assistant police commissioner Atul Kumar Singh.
The girls have left behind a diary which has many details about their daily life and their fondness of the Korean mobile game.
Discussing suicides can be triggering for some. However, suicides are preventable. A few major suicide prevention helpline numbers in India are 011-23389090 from Sumaitri (Delhi-based) and 044-24640050 from Sneha Foundation (Chennai-based).
