Ghaziabad triple suicide: Father's past under lens as probe widens

A new twist has emerged in the case of the suicide of three minor sisters in a residential township in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, as investigators have discovered that the girls’ father, Chetan Kumar, had also been linked to a suspicious death more than a decade ago.

In 2015, a woman with whom he was in a live-in relationship died after falling from the rooftop of a flat in the city's Sahibabad area under mysterious circumstances. At the time, the police treated it as a case of suicide, PTI cited a prominent source in the police as saying.

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That case has come under focus now after the deaths of the three girls. High-placed sources in the police have said that incidents like those are being taken into consideration while investigating the deaths of the minors and understanding their mental state at the time of the tragedy.

While their jump to death from the ninth floor of their apartment on Wednesday (February 4), which shook the country, brought light to a disturbing mix of obsession with Korean culture and mobile addiction, the investigators were also looking into the unusual family structure angle.

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Probe has revealed that Kumar currently has three wives — Sujata, Heena and Tina — all of whom are biological sisters and were living under the same roof. Among Kumar's daughters who died, the eldest (16 years) was Sujata’s, while the 14- and 12-year-olds were born to Heena.

No emotional bond despite many mother figures?

The third wife, Tina, also has a four-year-old daughter. Despite having multiple mother figures at home, the girls reportedly had no strong emotional bond with any of them.

Financial distress compounded their problems. A stockbroker by profession, Kumar was under a debt of around Rs 2 crore and had even sold his daughters’ mobile phones to pay electricity bills. Due to the hardship, the girls had also stopped attending school for the past two years.

Korean game fears

Police recovered an eight-page pocket diary from the girls’ room, which could be a crucial clue in the case. In it, the sisters expressed their deep love for Korean culture and K-pop. Addressing their father, they wrote, “We like Korean.”

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Investigators suspect the girls may have been part of a task-based Korean online game, where the final stage involves suicide (online suicide task). They had created a separate ‘Korean identity’ for themselves on the internet and had even adopted Korean names.

Final moments reconstructed

On the day of the incident, around 2.15 am, the three sisters locked themselves inside their room. One by one, they jumped from the balcony window of their ninth-floor apartment. The sound of the fall was so loud that residents across the housing society woke up. The girls were rushed to a hospital in Loni city near Ghaziabad, where doctors declared them dead.

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Police are now verifying whether gaming addiction alone led to the tragedy, or whether the father’s past and a less-than-friendly home environment played a key role in encouraging the girls to take such a step. For now, investigators are closely examining the truth behind the father’s claims and the family’s dire financial condition.

(This article was originally published in The Federal Desh.)