Korean pop fandom, family strife figure in diary left by Ghaziabad sisters who died by suicide

A nine-page pocket diary recovered from the room of three minor sisters who died by suicide in Ghaziabad has offered a glimpse into their inner world, marked by an intense attachment to the Korean culture and anguish over family strife, police said on Thursday.

The police probing the triple suicide case in Bharat City Society in Ghaziabad said that the initial investigations haven't revealed the use of any Korean task-based app by the girls. The police also said if the use of any such task-based Korean app is confirmed, they will write to the department concerned seeking a ban on such apps.

After the sisters — Nishika (16), Prachi (14) and Pakhi (12) — jumped to death from the ninth floor, their father Chetan Kumar claimed they had been playing a Korean game for close to three years and had not attended school since then.

After the postmortem, their bodies were cremated at Delhi's Nigam Bodh Ghat on the bank of the Yamuna river on Wednesday evening. The last rituals were performed by their father Chetan, Additional Commissioner of Police, Shalimar Garden, Atul Kumar Singh told PTI. "It is not known why the girls were cremated on the night of Wednesday. It may be due to their personal reasons," the ACP said, adding that the autopsy report confirmed that the girls died due to head injuries.

According to the police, the diary contains repeated references to the girls’ love for Korea and what they described as attempts by the family to make them give it up. “We love Korean. Love, love, love,” the diary states, calling itself a “true life story” and urging readers to believe what is written in it.

The note alleges that their parents were opposed to their interests and future choices, including marriage. “You tried to make us give up Korean. Korean was our life… You expected our marriage to an Indian, that can never happen,” the diary says. It also mentions physical punishment and ends with an apology addressed to their father. "Death is better for us than your beatings. That is why we are committing suicide... Sorry Papa."

“The pocket diary has been taken into custody and the matter is being investigated,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Trans-Hindon) Nimish Patil said. “We are examining the circumstances in which the diary was written and all related aspects,” he said.

On the condition of anonymity, an office-bearer of the residents’ body said the girls’ father, Chetan, had been under severe financial stress after incurring heavy losses in the stock market. He allegedly lost more than Rs 2 crore and, at one point, sold a mobile phone to pay the electricity bill, the person said, adding that the financial crunch had led to frequent clashes at home. DCP Patil said the police are also looking into the family’s financial situation as part of the probe.

While admitting that they were at present treating it as a suicide case, DCP Nimish Patil told PTI, "Our investigation primarily will focus on verifying if the girls were actually using a task-based app as claimed by their father and if that led to them committing suicide."

The DCP said that as of now, the cops have no evidence to prove that the girls were indeed using any Korean task-based app. "We have nothing to confirm if the girls were indeed using any app and if that was a Korean app. So we will seek information from the parents about any knowledge of the task-based app they might have," he said.