Three dead in India after dispute over an iPhone

The dispute over an iPhone that ended in three deaths in India

An 18-year-old, identified in reports as Kunal or Raja, died along with his parents this weekend in India. The trigger was the family's refusal to keep paying the instalments on an iPhone bought on credit. The argument escalated until the young man threatened to throw himself off a cliff on Khavdya hill. After nearly three hours of negotiation with police and locals, the father tried to pull him away from the edge. The son grabbed his hand and both fell. His mother, who witnessed the scene, threw herself after them. All three died.

The case has raised the alarm about a phenomenon that goes far beyond an isolated incident: the social pressure that turns a high-end phone into an essential object for the identity of many young people. Consumer credit puts a device whose cost can exceed several months' salary within anyone's reach, and the most vulnerable families are the ones with the least room to absorb that debt when the instalments become impossible to pay.

The reaction online has been, to say the least, disheartening. Comments are circulating asking about the state of the phone or joking that the insurance will cover it. That insensitivity says more about those who express it than about the victims. But it also reflects a banalisation of death that should give us pause.

The Khavdya tragedy forces us to confront two unfinished tasks: financial education for young people and the detection of mental health problems at a time when suicide has become one of the leading causes of death among teenagers. No phone is worth a life. But as long as consumption continues to act as a status marker, there will be those willing to pay for it with theirs.