The investigation into the death of three minor sisters who jumped from the ninth floor of a Ghaziabad high-rise just uncovered a murkier development. The narrative of the case has now pivoted from a narrative of digital addiction to a deeper, more unsettling exploration of a fractured household.
New revelations by the Uttar Pradesh police have unmasked the sisters’ father, Chetan Kumar, revealing a life defined by financial instability, a complex domestic web involving three wives, and a history shadowed by a previous suspicious death.
While Kumar initially framed the tragedy as a fallout of his daughters’ obsession with Korea and refusal to “live as Indians”, police have now flagged a chilling detail from his past. According to a report by The Times of India, Chetan Kumar used to have a live-in partner in 2015 who also died under similar suspicious circumstances.
As per the report, Kumar’s former partner fell to her death from the roof of a flat at Rajendra Nagar Colony in the Sahibabad police station area around 11 years ago.
Police investing the matter had dismissed the case back then by labelling it as a suicide. Speaking to TOI, DCP (Trans-Hindon) Nimish Patil who is leading the investigation on the case recently confirmed that the old files are being revisited to check for patterns of domestic distress.
As forensic teams scour the Bharat City apartment where Nishika (16), Prachi (14), and Pakhi (12) spent their final years in near-total isolation, the “Korean obsession” cited by the father is being viewed by investigators not just as a hobby, but as a psychological escape from a grim reality.
Fractured household led to game obsession?
The domestic structure within Flat 907 was far from conventional. Investigators revealed that Kumar was living with three wives—Sujata, Heena, and Tina—who are all biological sisters themselves. Sujata is Nishika’s mother, while Heena is the mother of Prachi and Pakhi.
The 18-page diary recovered from the scene offers a stark look into the girls’ internal lives. Notably, while the notes are filled with apologies to “Papa”, there is a conspicuous absence of any mention of their mothers.
“The girls seemed to exist in a vacuum where their father was the sole authority figure, yet the primary source of their friction,” a senior officer told Hindustan Times.
The ‘Korean’ escape
According to investigators, the three sisters had not stepped into a school for more than 6 years since the 2020 pandemic and had negligible interaction with any one in their society due to the despondent state of their father’s financial affairs.
The girls’ father, Chetan Kumar, a stock trader, is believed to be heavily in debt after suffering losses during the Covid period. Investigators said he took loans following those losses and struggled financially, which may have affected the children’s schooling.
Upon inquiring with their neighbours, the police also learnt that the children never really played with other children in the society or stepped out of the house.
Hence, in that situation of loneliness, isolation, fear and rejection the “Korean” world became more than entertainment for them, it became a big place of comfort, something they would go to not think about other issues. The Korean culture accessed through K-pop music, food and shows hence became a big part of their identity.
The sisters even adopted Korean names for each other (Maria, Aliza, and Cindy) and attempted to speak the language. According to the diary, the early teenagers and Pakhi almost always felt like they were “Koreans trapped in Indian bodies.”
Based on entries in the girls’ diary, this obsession with Korean culture also attracted punishment from their father. The diary also contains references to beatings, though it is not yet clear who was responsible. “Did we live in this world to get beaten by you… death would be better for us than beatings,” the girls wrote.
The trigger for the final act appears to have been the systemic destruction of their digital sanctuary. As per a TOI report, Kumar had reportedly sold the girls’ mobile phones to stay afloat while facing a debt of nearly Rs 2 crore. On the night of the tragedy, the sisters allegedly tried to access their favorite Korean apps on their mother’s phone but failed.
One entry in the diary addressed to the father reads: “Korean is our life, how did you even dare to make us leave our life? You don’t know how much we love them, now you have seen the proof.”
What happens next?
The Ghaziabad police are now working with cyber teams to track the IMEI numbers of the sold phones to retrieve deleted data.
While Kumar maintains that “online fantasy” killed his daughters, the police are probing if the toxic combination of financial ruin, a troubling family structure and the sudden separation of the kids from their only window to the outside world created a “pressure cooker” environment.
For now, the walls of the girls’ room—scrawled with messages like “I am very very alone”—remain the only silent witnesses to a tragedy that was years in the making.
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