In the early hours of a Tuesday morning in Ghaziabad, three sisters — aged 16, 14, and 12 — ended their lives, leaving behind a note that named online Korean games as the world they could not bear to leave. Their deaths arrive not as an isolated tragedy but as part of a widening pattern in which digital spaces draw young people into attachments invisible to those who love them most. The question their father's grief opens is one that no single family can answer alone: how do we see what our children are living inside, when the door to that world has no handle on the outside?
Three sisters in Ghaziabad die by suicide, citing inability to leave online Korean games
Three minor sisters (aged 16, 14, 12) died by suicide after jumping from a ninth-floor balcony, reportedly due to online gaming addiction.
Korea is our life, and you cannot make us leave it.
Mark
So the father didn't know what games they were playing at all?
Mimi
He said he didn't. He knew they were playing something online, but not which games, not what the games asked them to do. That's the gap that's haunting him now.
Luke
But we should be careful here—he says he didn't know, but that's his account after the fact. We don't actually have confirmation from anyone else about what the girls were or weren't telling him before this happened.
Mark
The note mentions "Korea" and "Korean games." Do we know which games?
Mimi
No. The police report doesn't name them. The father doesn't know. That's actually one of the most striking absences in the reporting—we know the girls died, we know they left a note about Korean games, but we don't know which ones.
Luke
Right. And that matters because it changes what we can actually say about causation. Is it the games themselves? The social dynamics within them? Something else entirely? We're working with the girls' own explanation, which is real, but it's not the same as understanding the mechanism.
Mark
The timing is interesting—this happened a week after the Kerala case.
Mimi
Yes. A 16-year-old girl in Kerala died by suicide after learning about the death of a Korean friend she'd met online. Then a week later, three sisters in Ghaziabad. Both cases involve Korean connections, both involve young people, both involve online spaces.
Luke
But we should note that "a week apart" doesn't establish a causal link between the two incidents. They're separate cases that happen to share some surface similarities. The reporting connects them, but that's editorial framing, not confirmed fact.
Mark
What do we actually know about what the games do—mechanically, socially?
Mimi
We don't. That's the honest answer. We know the girls said they couldn't live without them. We know the father suspects the games assigned tasks. But we don't have detail about how the games work, what keeps people engaged, whether there's a social component that made leaving harder.
Luke
And that's a real limitation in what we can report. We can say the girls died and what they said in their note. We can't yet say definitively what the games did or didn't do to them.
El Pulso
- Three minor sisters jumped from a ninth-floor balcony at 2 a.m., leaving a note that read 'Korea is our life' — a farewell written with devastating clarity.
- Their father had no knowledge of the games his daughters played, the tasks those games assigned, or the depth of the world his children had disappeared into each night.
- The deaths arrive just one week after a Kerala teenager died by suicide linked to a Korean online friend, making the pattern impossible to dismiss as coincidence.
- Investigators confirmed the note and the facts, but the specific games, their mechanics, and whether assigned challenges contributed to the girls' despair remain unknown.
- The case has reignited urgent public debate about online content's hold on minors — a conversation that keeps beginning after each death, yet rarely arrives at protection before the next.
In the early hours of a Tuesday morning in Ghaziabad, three sisters — aged 16, 14, and 12 — ended their lives, leaving behind a note that named online Korean games as the world they could not bear to leave. Their deaths arrive not as an isolated tragedy but as part of a widening pattern in which digital spaces draw young people into attachments invisible to those who love them most. The question their father's grief opens is one that no single family can answer alone: how do we see what our children are living inside, when the door to that world has no handle on the outside?
Around 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, three sisters — Nishika, 16; Prachi, 14; and Pakhi, 12 — fell from the ninth-floor balcony of their apartment in Ghaziabad's Bharat City Society. Police arrived within minutes and found them at Loni Hospital, where all three were pronounced dead.
Their father, Chetan Kumar, found a note. It began with an apology and then explained, with a directness that would not leave him: the girls could not abandon the online Korean games they had been playing, and so they had chosen this. Kumar told investigators he had known nothing — not which games his daughters played, not what tasks or challenges those games had given them, not what his children were doing in the hours they spent online. His grief curdled quickly into self-reproach. He urged other parents not to let their children play such games, acknowledging that he simply had not known to ask.
The deaths came one week after a 16-year-old girl in Kerala died by suicide, reportedly after learning of the death of a Korean friend she had met through social media. The year before, a 12-year-old boy in the United Kingdom had died attempting to recreate a dangerous challenge linked to the Netflix series 'Squid Game.' Each incident has briefly pulled the problem into public view; each time, parents and authorities have seemed equally unprepared.
What the investigation has not yet answered is which games the three sisters were playing, what kept them so completely bound to those spaces, and whether specific tasks assigned by the games played any role in their final hours. Their father stands at a door he never knew existed, trying to understand what was happening on the other side.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, around 2 a.m., three sisters fell from the ninth-floor balcony of an apartment building in Ghaziabad's Bharat City Society. Nishika was 16. Prachi was 14. Pakhi was 12. Police arrived after receiving a call at 2:15 a.m. and found them at Loni Hospital, where all three were pronounced dead.
Their father, Chetan Kumar, discovered a note left behind. In it, his daughters explained their decision with a clarity that would haunt him. "Sorry, Papa," the note began. "We cannot leave Korea. Korea is our life, and you cannot make us leave it. That is why we are committing suicide." The girls were referring not to the country but to online Korean games they had become unable to abandon.
Kumar told investigators he had no idea his daughters were addicted to these games. He did not know which ones they played. He did not know what tasks or challenges the games assigned them. He did not know, in other words, what his children were doing in the hours they spent online. When he read the note, he was devastated—and then he was angry at himself. "Whatever happened is quite bad," he said. "I will say, please don't let your children play games. We never know what tasks they will give. We didn't know this. If they had shared what kind of tasks they were giving, then it would not have happened. I don't know which games those were. We just didn't know. If we knew, then we would not have let them play that game."
ACP Atul Kumar, the police officer who responded, confirmed the basic facts: three girls, a ninth-floor fall, a suicide note recovered at the scene. The investigation was ongoing, he said, but the note's contents were clear enough. The girls had written their own explanation.
The deaths came just one week after another incident in Kerala, where a 16-year-old girl in Chottanikkara had died by suicide, reportedly after learning of the death of a Korean friend she had met through social media. The pattern was becoming visible—a constellation of young people, mostly girls, whose lives had become entangled with online spaces and the people and games within them, in ways their parents could not see or understand.
The Ghaziabad case revived a broader conversation about online content's grip on minors. The year before, a 12-year-old boy in the United Kingdom had died after attempting to recreate a scene from the Netflix series "Squid Game." An inquest later determined he may have been trying a dangerous online challenge involving choking until loss of consciousness. The pattern was not new—online challenges and games had been implicated in youth deaths before—but each incident seemed to pull the problem further into public view, and each time, parents and authorities seemed equally unprepared.
What remained unknown was the specific nature of the games the three sisters had been playing, what mechanics or social pressures kept them engaged, and whether the games themselves had assigned tasks that contributed to their despair. Their father's anguish was real, but it was also the anguish of someone looking back at a closed door, trying to understand what had been happening on the other side.
Citas Notables
Sorry, Papa... we cannot leave Korea. Korea is our life, and you cannot make us leave it. That is why we are committing suicide.— From the suicide note left by the three sisters
Whatever happened is quite bad. I will say, please don't let your children play games. We never know what tasks they will give.— Chetan Kumar, father of the three sisters, speaking to IANS
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Crime & Justice