They thought they would live happily ever after, following their marriage. But it was not to be.
The lover-boy-turned husband E. Ilavarasan committed suicide Thursday on the railway tracks after his wife Divya told a court the day before that she wanted to be with her widowed mother and young brother and not with her husband, police said.
Cupid's arrows hit Ilavarasan, a Dalit man from Dharmapuri district, around 380 km from here, and Divya a Vanniayar woman. They got married last August sparking a caste war that ripped them apart.
Following the caste war, the village panchayat asked Divya to return to her parent's place, which she refused to last year.
Shocked at his daughter's decision, her father Nagaraj committed suicide. This angered the Vanniyar community members who set on fire Dalit houses in the locality.
The PMK led by S. Ramadoss accused Dalit boys of luring Vanniyar girls into marriage.
Nevertheless, the couple lived together till Divya visited her mother Thenmozhi, who was sick in June and never returned to her husband.
Ilavarasan filed a police complaint in Dharmapuri that his wife went missing while Thenmozhi too filed a habeas corpus petition in the state high court to find about her daughter.
Appearing before a division bench of the Madras High Court Wednesday, Divya told the court that her mother was lonely and she would live with her. She told reporters that her relationship with Illavarasan was over.
A dejected Ilavarasan allegedly committed suicide on the rail tracks near Dharmapuri, police said, adding that investigation was still on.
