Three minor sisters who had not gone to school for three years and had been addicted to a Korean task-based online game died after allegedly jumping off the balcony of their ninth-floor apartment in Ghaziabad around 2am on Wednesday after their parents restricted their cellphone use.

The siblings, aged 16, 14 and 12, who used to do everything together, including bathing, eating and sleeping, bolted the door of their room after having thrown their cellphones outside and jumped from the balcony one by one. Their father’s comments and the police’s investigation so far point to acute social isolation, with the girls becoming increasingly withdrawn, a situation complicated further by the pandemic.

A purported suicide note written in a smattering of Hindi and English recovered by the police says: “Iss diary mein jo kuch bhi likha hai woh sab padh lo kyuki ye sab sach hai (Read everything written in this diary because all of it is true.) Read now. I’m really sorry. Sorry, Papa.” The note ends with a hand-drawn crying emoji.

“We can’t leave Korea. Korea is our life. You can’t free us. We are ending our lives,” the note adds.

The eight-page diary notes detail their gaming and mobile activities.

The police have found photos of family members scattered on the floor of the siblings’ room. Scribbled on the wall was the following sentence: “I am very, very alone. My life is very, very alone.”

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

Their screams and the thud of their bodies hitting the ground were loud enough to wake up their parents, neighbours and security guards at the apartment complex in Bharat City. The girls appear to have used a two-step stool to jump over the high balcony railing.

Assistant commissioner of police (Shalimar Garden) Atul Kumar Singh said the preliminary investigation suggested that the sisters were deeply addicted to the task-based interactive Korean Love Game, and their parents had objected to their excessive use of mobile phones in recent days.

The police sources later said the girls were also hooked to Korean dramas, and were emotionally distressed by familial and financial setbacks.

According to some media reports, such was their addiction to the game and their obsession with Korea that they had given themselves Korean names.

The Korean Love Game is a challenge-based app game. In this “romantic” game, one interacts with a virtual partner who communicates with them in Korean and assigns daily tasks. The online game is not available on common platforms like Google Play or Apple App Store. It is reportedly pushed through private links, messaging platforms and online communities.

Chetan said he was unaware that the game the girls were playing involved “tasks”, but added that his daughters had repeatedly said they wanted to go to Korea.

Chetan told PTI Videos: “They had been playing the game for two-and-a-half to three years. They often said they wanted to go to Korea. I did not know that this game involved such tasks. I came to know about all this only after the police forensic team examined their mobile phones.”

Chetan claimed the girls had not attended school for the past two to three years after failing academically, which made them feel embarrassed and increasingly reticent. They largely confined themselves to their room, the father said.

According to the police, the sisters became addicted to online gaming during the Covid-19 pandemic and had been continuously playing the Korean game, mostly together.

Recounting the sequence of events, Chetan said the family was asleep when the incident took place. “My wife was sleeping in the inner room. The girls woke up on the pretext of drinking water, bolted the door from inside and jumped from the balcony,” he said.

He said the girls had mobile phones with them, but he did not notice them immediately. “They threw the phones outside the room. The police later seized them for the investigation,” he added.

Asked whether he ever tried to stop his daughters from gaming, Chetan said he had no idea about the nature of the game. “If I had known that such tasks existed, no father would ever allow his children to be part of it,” he said.

Chetan said he had now come to know that the game involved instructions, which the children followed. He recalled that the second daughter had once told him she was the “boss” and that her sisters followed her directions.

“I thought it was just like the games we played in childhood. I never imagined this could happen,” he said.

Chetan has five children from two marriages. Of the three victims, one was the daughter of his first wife while the two others were daughters of his second wife. The wives are sisters and all of them live together.

Deputy commissioner of police Nimish Patil said: “Family members had restricted the sisters’ mobile phone use for the past few days, which left them distressed and may have triggered the decision (to take the extreme step).”

The police received information around 2.15am that three girls had jumped off the balcony of a ninth-floor flat in a tower of Bharat City under the Teela Mor police station limits in the Sahibabad area.

On reaching the spot, the police found that the girls had suffered fatal injuries. They were rushed in an ambulance to a hospital in Loni, where doctors declared them dead on arrival.