Chennai: A 30-year-old transgender committed suicide by jumping into the Adyar river from the Kotturpuram Bridge, on Thursday afternoon. Her lifeless body was pulled out of the slush after a 90-minute rescue operation.
Sources said the deceased, identified as Muruga aka Suji (30), was a resident of Kotturpuram Slum Clearance tenements. She leaped off the bridge when Manoharan, a sub-Inspector attached to Kotturpuram Police station and on patrol, was trying to reach out to her, following alerts from the neighbourhood.
Subsequently, Manoharan alerted his superiors and the TNFRS control.
Before the TNFRS rushed to the scene, Abhiramapuram Police Inspector J Prabhu entered Adyar with a boat and personnel borrowed from Madras Boat Club.
The TNFRS vehicle had to approach the river from a lane on the other bank as the rescue operation going on had become a crowd puller with motorists stopping their vehicles freely on the bridge and looking over the retaining wall curiously.
“Suji had taken to heavy drinking since Monday and came to my place drunk. I chided her and turned her away to get some sleep before she could go out. About 10 minutes later, I got a call saying that Suji had leaped into Adyar”, Suji's aunt Poonkodi recalled while she waited on the bridge with tears while her niece was being brought out.
The Kotturpuram bridge, a bizarre suicide point in the city, has accounted for more than 20 suicides in the past 10 years. The frequency had gone up with the suicide of the celebrity husband of a well-known vocalist in the City, which was reported on Dec 20, 2012.
Eleven days later, an unemployed techie jumped into the river from Kotturpuram bridge from the same spot. The same night, a youth from Velachery attempted to jump but was saved by passersby. The very next day another auto driver attempted to jump into the river from the same spot in an inebriated condition.
A senior manager of a nationalised bank jumped into the Adyar in Nov-ember 2014. Subsequently, the civic body raised the parapet wall of the bridge to 4 metres as a suicide barrier. The spot still remains ghoulishly popular with those willing to take the extreme step.
