The note left behind by three sisters in Ghaziabad who died by suicide draws a grim picture of their lives that was marked by obsession over Korean culture – from K-pop music, K-dramas and even Korean online games. The eight-page note which is now a crucial evidence also points towards problems within the family.

Ghaziabad: Police sealed the area where the three half sisters had fallen after jumping from the window of their flat on ninth floor. (Hindustan Times )
Ghaziabad: Police sealed the area where the three half sisters had fallen after jumping from the window of their flat on ninth floor. (Hindustan Times )

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One of the chilling lines from the diary read, “Will you stop us from going to Korea?”, highlighting how they were fixated over the Korean culture. The girls even took up Korean names – Aliza, Cindy, and Maria – and would refer to each other with those names, HT reported.

‘Korean was our life’

Their fixation also had an impact on their personal relations as they claimed in the note that the family was opposed to their Korean obsession. The note revealed the girls did not “like” their half-brother or other family members because they felt no one around them understood their deep fascination with Korean culture.

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The trio in the note, quoted by PTI and addressed to their family said, “You tried to make us give up Korean. Korean was our life… You expected our marriage to an Indian, that can never happen.”

Mention of physical punishment

The note also makes reference to physical punishment wherein the girls signed off with an apology for the father and said, “Death is better for us than your beatings. That is why we are committing suicide… Sorry Papa.”

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“They had a single phone which they used to watch shows. They also had a TV which they used to watch K-drama and movies. They wrote in the note that they liked Korea, China, Japan and Thailand, and that they liked people from those places. They were upset that they could not go and live there,” police said.

In days leading up to the chilling suicide, tensions had reportedly escalated in the house as the father sold the phone that the girls used to watch K-dramas. Police said the father sold the phone for ₹3,500 probably due to financial stress. He also forced them to delete a social media account with around 2,000 followers about 10 days before the incident. “This angered them deeply,” an officer said. “Their online world was everything to them.”

What the police said

Police told HT that the girls had completely internalised this alternate identity. “In the note, they repeatedly mention how no one – not their brother, not other family members – understood their love for Korea,” an officer said, adding that the note explicitly stated that the girls did not like their half-brother, referring to him only as “bhai”.

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The sisters had stopped going to school around 2020 and had almost no social life. The eldest had studied till Class 7, the middle one till Class 5, and the youngest till Class 3. They had little interaction with others, including their brother and did not attend school. They rarely stepped out, and had no known friends in the neighbourhood. “They did not have a social life at all,” an officer said.

[Discussing suicides can be triggering for some. However, suicides are preventable. A few major suicide prevention helpline numbers in India are 011-23389090 from Sumaitri (Delhi-based) and 044-24640050 from Sneha Foundation (Chennai-based).]