GHAZIABAD: Police in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad investigating the deaths of three minor sisters who jumped from the ninth floor of their residential building earlier this week revealed new details on Saturday.Officers say preliminary findings point to emotional distress linked to family issues and the confiscation of their mobile phones.
The sisters — Nishika (16), Prachi (14) and Pakhi (12) — died after jumping from a residential tower in Bharat City Society, which falls under the Trans-Hindon police station area. According to police, their father, Chetan Kumar, had taken away the girls’ mobile phones after noticing what he believed was an excessive attachment to Korean culture.Also read: Father also had live-in partner who died after falling from roof: Why Ghaziabad sisters’ suicide is getting murkier As a result, the girls were unable to play online games or communicate with friends they had made through Korean applications. The phones were later sold, police said.
What happened on night of tragedy
On the night of the incident, the sisters allegedly took their mother’s phone but could not access the Korean app they had been using. A forensic examination of the device did not find any evidence of access to the application. Fingerprints, including those found on a handwritten suicide note and messages recovered from the spot, have been sent to the forensic science laboratory, the report of which is awaited, DCP (Trans Hindon) Nimish Patil told PTI on Saturday. According to news agency PTI, police have also confirmed that Kumar currently has three wives — Sujata, Heena and Tina — all of whom are biological sisters. Sujata is Nishika’s mother, while Heena is the mother of Prachi and Pakhi. Investigators said the three girls appeared to be more attached to their father than to their mothers, which they said was reflected in the suicide note that addressed the father but did not mention the mother.Cyber crime teams are trying to trace the buyers who purchased the mobile phones using the IMEI numbers so that data related to the Korean applications can be retrieved, Patil said, adding that the case is being probed from multiple angles.
A gory past
Police are also looking into the family’s past. In 2015, the father Chetan Kumar’s live-in partner died under suspicious circumstances after falling from the roof of a flat at Rajendra Nagar Colony in the Sahibabad police station area. Later, the police dismissed the case, treating the death as a suicide, Patil told PTI. Preliminary findings, including a nine-page pocket diary recovered from the sisters’ room, point to an intense attachment to Korean culture and possible family discord, police said. Officials said one mobile phone had been bought for Nishika around three months ago, while another was purchased for Prachi about 15 days before the incident. The sisters were cremated at Delhi’s Nigam Bodh Ghat on Wednesday evening.
