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On February 4, 2026, three sisters, Nishika (16), Prachi (14), and Pakhi (12), jumped from the ninth floor of their flat in a high-rise apartment in Ghaziabad’s Bharat City Society. By sunset, their deaths had been distilled to a headline: the latest in a string of obsessive teenage girls hooked on Korean content who broke when their father seized their cellphones. The narrative gained acceptance for its tidiness. It implicated screens, foreign media, and youthful obsession. But the reasons why three young girls who were reportedly living in almost complete isolation for years ended up dying together cannot be attributed to digital addiction. The invisible story is concealed within the walls of their home.

Their father, Chetan Kumar, ‘married’ and lived with three women, Sujata, Heena, and Tina, who were biological sisters. Two of the girls were daughters of one sister, while the third belonged to the other. The third wife was considerably younger than the other two and had a small child of her own. Polygamy is illegal for Hindus under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, unless polygamy is linked to religious conversion, and police investigators have indicated there are discrepancies in the ‘marriage’ dates and documents. Whether legally documented or not, the psychological impact of living in such a relationship is significant. Three sisters married to the same man would create a mesh of loyalty, dominance, and tension. All power could lie in one individual. Emotional connections would be complicated and shifting. Silence may be necessary for survival. For children raised in such a household, especially daughters, the lines of power and protection may easily be blurred.

Financial strain seemed to exacerbate everything. According to reports, the father had nearly ₹2 crore in debt. The girls stopped attending school after the COVID lockdown of 2020 and never returned. That, in itself, is significant. School is more than just education. It is structure, friends, adults, and exposure to the world. It is where warning signs may be observed. When three teenage girls vanish from the system for years, without any formal instruction at home, someone dropped the ball. Neighbours would later describe the family as reclusive. The girls were seldom seen playing with other children in the housing society. Their world was limited to a shared room and restricted internet access.

During this time, the web may go from a source of amusement to a critical resource. Adolescence is a time for teens to understand and learn from the feedback they get through their interactions and experimentation. With an absence of peers and external validation, young adults may seek to form a self by joining online communities or embodying characters in works of fiction. The sisters are suspected of adopting new names and immersing themselves in Korean soap operas, stars, and pop culture, fantasising about an alternative identity. This in itself is not unusual; fandom and roleplay are typical adolescent diversions. The problem arises when those identities are not extensions of real life but replacements for it.

The father reportedly characterised their conduct as addiction and sold the phone they had been using shortly before the incident. Investigators spoke of an alleged “task-based Korean game,” but forensic experts have not conclusively identified any particular app, and it has appeared under varying descriptions. Some reports describe it as featuring mission-style challenges; others deny that any such game was in play. What is certain is that the girls did not have individual devices. They were sharing one. That detail undercuts the narrative of excess and suggests a limited connection rather than open-ended immersion.

An eight-page suicide note was found. Its length suggested deliberation and communication, not impulsivity. Excerpts quoted described loneliness and beatings, including a sentence suggesting he found it “easier to die than to get beat.” If these are accurate quotes, they suggest a focus not on the digital but on the domestic. The note was reportedly addressed to the father and not the mothers, which has led to questions about authority, fear, and affection within the home.

There have been cases of suicide pacts among siblings, especially those raised in extreme isolation. When children are one another’s entire world, their thoughts may be reflected and amplified. Grievances may bounce around uncorrected. Despair may be contagious. Shared values, especially among those closely bonded, can surmount fear and reflex. It does not require some supernatural intervention by foreign games or underground cults. It only requires steady psychological pressure in a closed environment.

The focus on Korean culture in coverage illustrates a familiar reflex. Societies look for scapegoats after youth tragedies: video games, music scenes, and internet forums. These are easier explanations to digest than societal neglect. Studies of polygamous families in low-income environments indicate a greater likelihood of conflict, emotional neglect, and contention for scarce parental attention, particularly in cases of concentrated authority within the family. Add economic disaster and potential violence, and the home can become a pressure cooker. It is not a contradiction to be lonely within an extended family when the emotional subsistence is imbalanced.

There are also reports that a former partner of the father had taken her own life years earlier in a fall like the one that killed her, and investigators are examining timelines for past cases. It does not prove guilt, but it certainly suggests that explanations on the surface level should be examined more closely.

The broader implications extend beyond one apartment. Prolonged absence from school by a child ought to alert the authorities. There are systems for child protection, but they are inconsistently applied. There are minimal and stigmatised services for teenagers’ mental health. Isolated families with limited means may be more likely to turn away than to ask for help. When children are absent from the desks and daily routines of classrooms and neighbourhoods for years at a time, it is likely that many signals go unnoticed.

Digital overuse can harm mental health, and predatory online environments certainly exist. But technology is rarely encountered in isolation; it often fills an emotional void. Here, the void appears to have been forged by a lack of education, economic instability, social isolation, and allegations of a climate of fear in the home. If the sisters fled to remote cultural corners, then perhaps there they discovered a sense of belonging and beauty that they couldn’t find in their everyday lives.

It wasn’t the loss of a game console that ended the lives of three sisters. It was their pages of isolation; their years of being out of school; a troubled, crowded household. Not foreign propaganda, but prolonged isolation, limited supervision, and untreated family stress. The tragedy demands more attention to our child welfare systems, school surveillance, mental health resources, and critical scrutiny of family environments functioning in legal and emotional limbo.

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