A mix of a stressful life at home because of financial hardship, gaming addiction and harsh parenting could have pushed the three minor sisters in Ghaziabad into isolation and despair and led to their purported suicide, a police officer who is part of the probe team told The Telegraph on Thursday.

"The initial findings suggest the family was under acute financial strain over the past couple of years, which led to frequent arguments at home. The three siblings were pulled out of school after the Covid lockdown and were completely isolated and emotionally disturbed. Later, they got addicted to Korean task-based games as they tried to find emotional refuge in the virtual world,” the officer said.

“We suspect all these factors may have pushed them into despair and depression. It seems the immediate trigger behind the extreme step was the parents' move of confiscating their phones and forcing them to quit the virtual world that had provided them emotional refuge."

The three sisters — aged 12, 14 and 16 — died purportedly after jumping off the ninth floor of their apartment building early on Wednesday. Their parents found an eight-page note in a diary in which the girls had expressed their distress, feeling of loneliness and deep admiration for Korean culture.

The girls accused their parents of trying to force them to give up what they described as their emotional refuge.

Although their father, forex trader Chetan Kumar, claimed the siblings did not go to school because they were academically poor, police sources said he had stopped sending them to school as he had run up debts of ₹2 crore and could no longer pay the fees.

Two weeks ago, the father allegedly took away the girls’ mobile phones and sold them to pay his electricity bills. The girls started using their mother’s phone but were recently stopped from using it too, the police said.

They played task-based Korean games, listened to Korean music, watched Korean web series and cartoons, and wanted to visit Korea, the father is said to have told the police.

“They wanted us to accept Korean culture and when we refused, their behaviour changed. They went into a shell and began living in their own world,” police sources quoted the father as saying.

A preliminary probe has revealed that the siblings got up from bed around 1.40am on the pretext of drinking water, went to the puja room and locked it from inside. After some time, their mother knocked on the door but they didn’t respond. They are believed to have jumped off the balcony around 2am.

Police sources said that post-Covid, the three girls were pulled out of school because of financial stress. The father reportedly lost money during the pandemic and then took loans he couldn’t repay, causing a great deal of stress.

“It’s around this time that they became completely isolated and started taking refuge in the virtual world. They largely confined themselves to their room,” a source said.