Honour killing claims life of 21-year-old in Madurai

The deceased woman, Suganya, had completed nursing and has been working at a private hospital at Erode. She fell in love with Boopathi (23) from Erode, who has been working at the same hospital as an assistant. However, their love was met with stiff resistance from Suganya’s parents. 

When the family came to know of her love affair, they kept her under house arrest. But, in January Suganya managed to elope with Boopathi and married him. The couple had been living at Erode for the past three months. Meanwhile, the family members of Suganya miffed with her elopement had been planning to kill her as she married against their will.

In April, Suganya’s elder sister, Lakshmi, was sent to Erode by her family with the task of bringing back Suganya. Lakshmi went to Erode, stayed with Suganya and made her to believe that the family members had cooled down after her elopement. 

Lakshmi had also informed Suganya that the family had accepted their marriage and had invited both Suganya and Boopathy to visit their house during the temple festival at their village. Trusting her words the couple had gone to the village on April 14 and the family had asked Boopathy to leave Suganya at their house for two weeks. 

An unsuspecting Boopathy had dropped his wife at her house and returned to Erode. But from that day onwards he was not able to contact his wife. Initially, the family gave Boopathy various reasons like Suganya had gone to another village to meet some of her relatives and she had been not keeping well, etc.

As a week passed, Boopathy became suspicious and went to their village to meet his wife. But he was not allowed to meet her by his in-laws. Hence, he filed a complaint with Sedapatti police on April 24 that his wife was missing. 

Police began investigation on the missing case. The parents informed the police that Suganya went missing and they too had no idea about her whereabouts. However, police officers became suspicious and they grilled her parents and family members. Later, they confessed to burning her by pouring kerosene on Suganya. 

Police rushed to the place of the crime and found only ashes there. Based on the confession, Sedapatti police altered the woman missing case to that of murder and arrested Suganya’s father Periyakarthikeyan.