Chennai: Two days after a 21-year-old woman committed suicide at home in Tirusulam just two months into marriage, police here have arrested her husband for allegedly abetting the suicide.
Police said the deceased, M. Manisha (21), native of Puyiankudi in Nellai district, moved to Chennai years back with her father Murugan (47) and a 19-year-old brother. Murugan is a truck driver in a Tirusulam stone quarry, while Manisha did her engineering course in a private college in the city.
Sources said, Manisha became friends with Y. Abin Raj (25) of Tirusulam, whose father also worked in a stone quarry. Soon they fell in love. When Manisha opened up her affair with Abin Raj to her father, Murugan allegedly opposed her relationship with Abin. However, Manisha was stubborn and eloped with Abin the same night, police said.
The duo got married and lived in their friend's house for a while, and later moved into a rented house in Pammal near Pallavaram. Knowing this, Murugan approached the Pallavaram police and filed a kidnap case against Abin.
However, during an enquiry, Manisha refused to go with her father.
On September 1, Pallavaram police retrieved the body of Manisha from a house in Tirisulam. Police said she was found hanging from the ceiling. Based on a complaint filed by Abin Raj, police registered a case and under Section 174 (unnatural death), and sent the body to the Chromepet hospital, and later handed it over to her family.
During investigations, Abin said Manisha used to often pick up arguments with him, and she committed suicide. On Wednesday, Murugan stumbled upon an audio conversation recorded in Manisha's phone. Police who listened to the audio said that Abin had an illicit affair with another woman, Anitha, from Tirusulam. When Manisha learned about this, she had called Anitha and begged her to leave her husband.
Armed with the audio evidence, police arrested Abin Raj under Section 306 (abetment of suicide), and remanded him under judicial custody.
