Three Hours On A Hill, Three Deaths, One iPhone EMI

The argument that ended three lives in Maharashtra last Friday started with an unpaid iPhone EMI. On 21 August, 19-year-old Kunal Chandgude fought with his father about instalments he could not cover on a phone he had insisted on buying. By early afternoon Kunal, his father Murlidhar, 48, and his mother Sangita were all dead at the bottom of a gorge near Tisgaon, in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district.

What makes this different from the usual one-paragraph tragedy is how long it lasted, and how many people watched. This was not a sudden act behind a closed door. It ran for roughly three hours in the open, in front of police, firefighters, neighbours and a former village sarpanch, all of whom took turns trying to talk a teenager down off a ledge.

Since then, older videos of Kunal and his mother have started circulating across Marathi social media, which is why a local district story has turned into a national one. The clips are ordinary — a son and his mother at home — and that ordinariness is exactly what has unsettled people who have watched them.

What Happened On Khawadya Hill

According to accounts in The Tribune and Free Press Journal, the family lived at Zalta Phata, in the area covered by Waluj MIDC police station. Kunal left home around 10 am after the row and climbed Khawadya Hill. His parents followed to bring him back. Police, villagers and a fire brigade unit reached the spot and stayed for close to three hours, with a safety net laid out below the edge.

Around 1 pm, Murlidhar moved in and tried to physically pull his son back. Both men lost their footing and fell. Sangita, watching from a few feet away, jumped after them. All three died at the scene. Postmortems were carried out and police say the legal formalities are still in progress.

The Videos That Surfaced After The iPhone EMI Row

TV9 Marathi has reported on a clip now spreading widely: Kunal washing his mother's feet, placing them in a basin and cleaning them, in what looks like a small home ritual filmed on a phone. Other footage shot by onlookers during the standoff itself shows people on the hillside with folded hands, pleading with him. TV9 Marathi also reported that Kunal was a strong student and that the phone at the centre of the row was an iPhone 15.

Sanjay Jadhav, a former sarpanch of Tisgaon, was among those who tried to reason with him. His appeal, quoted by Free Press Journal, was simple and direct.

Maa ke liye jee lo na! — Live for your mother, at least.

How Phone Instalments Actually Work Here

Financing a phone is now the norm, not the exception. Counterpoint Research found that 35% of smartphone sales in India were financed in 2025, and expects that to reach 42% in 2026 as component costs push prices up. A separate report cited by India TV found that roughly one in four iPhone buyers here used an NBFC loan, card EMI or cashback scheme between January and August 2025.

No-Cost EMI Is Still A Loan

The phrase "no-cost" refers only to the interest being absorbed as a discount. Underneath, a lender has issued you credit and reported it to the credit bureaus. Miss a payment and it shows on your CIBIL record like any other default, along with bounce charges and late fees. For a first-time borrower under 25 with no other credit history, a single missed instalment can drag the score down sharply.

What One Missed Instalment Really Costs

The recovery machinery starts fast. An auto-debit that fails triggers a bank penalty, the NBFC adds its own late fee, and calls begin within days. For a young borrower with no salary slip, the pressure lands squarely on the parents who co-signed or who were simply going to be asked for the money. That is the pressure point this case sat on.

If The Instalment Is The Problem, Do This First

A missed EMI on a phone is a solvable problem, and it is worth saying plainly what the options are:

• Call the lender before the due date, not after — restructuring is far easier pre-default.
• Ask for the foreclosure amount; selling the handset and closing the loan is usually cheaper than defaulting.
• Recovery agents cannot threaten, abuse or call outside 8 am to 7 pm under RBI rules — complain to the lender's grievance officer, then the RBI ombudsman.
• Nothing about a consumer loan of this size can be enforced by arrest.

What The Police Do Next

Waluj MIDC police are treating the deaths as accidental and suicidal, with the investigation focused on establishing the sequence on the ledge from witness accounts and phone footage. Because so many people were present and filming, there is unusually rich material available. No case has been reported against any third party, and no lender has been named in connection with the iPhone EMI in question.

If someone in your house is losing sleep over a phone loan, treat it as a household problem, not a personal failure — the debt is small, fixable and worth far less than the person carrying it. India's free mental health helpline, Tele-MANAS, is on 14416 and answers in multiple languages, round the clock.