By Sindhu Kannan
CHENNAI: The Arani police have filed a case of supected death after S Amlu, 29, a dalit woman, filed a complaint saying that her husband who was visiting his family had died at Karani village in Tiruvallur district last Friday and his body was cremated by his family without informing her.
A Gowthaman, 29, who hails from the vanniyar community, married the woman last year against the wishes of his family. In a complaint lodged with the Arani police on Wednesday, the woman said her husband received a call from his sister last Friday (September 17) about the death of a relative.
Gowthaman, who immediately left for his village, didn’t return till Monday. After her efforts to contact him failed, Amlu sent her brother Praveen to the village to look for her husband. Upon reaching the village, Praveen saw Gowthaman’s obituary posters pasted in the village which said that he had died on Friday.
Enquiries with the villagers revealed that the family had cremated his body on the same day without informing police and Amlu.
After the Arani police booked a case under CrPC 174 (suspicious death) and IPC 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence committed), five of Gowthaman’s family members father Annamalai, mother Akila, brother Srinivasan, and sisters, Gomathi and Manimegalai, have gone missing.
According to police, Amlu, a nurse at a city hospital and a resident of Ponneri, fell in love with Gowthaman after they met in a train. Since she was a dalit, Gowthaman’s family objected to their wedding. But the couple went ahead and got married on September 4, 2019.
They stayed at a rented house in Teynampet. Every Sunday, Gowthaman used to visit his village to meet his family. But after his family started pestering him to abandon Amlu and marry another girl from vanniyar community, he stopped visiting them. Amlu delivered a baby girl on August 18, 2021.
This story first appeared on timesofindia.indiatimes.com