CHENNAI: On an indelibly dark day that the families will never forget, everything that could go wrong indeed went wrong for Mythili. The 20-year-old succumbed to burns that she suffered when her lover Parthiban immolated himself and embraced her on Friday night. Mythili was walking back home at Lenin Nagar in Ambattur at around 8 pm when Parthiban, who was hiding in a bush, pounced on her. He snatched her phone while she was in conversation with her mother and threw it away.
“I thought he was going to fight. Instead, in a flash he poured kerosene on himself and a little on me. Even before I could realise what was happening, he set himself ablaze and immediately wrapped my face with the dupatta and hugged me tight,” Mythili narrated to her elder sister Meena, hours before she succumbed to injuries at the hospital.
“He let me go only after I was burnt. I could not see the road and started running towards the bushes. Though there was a small drainage nearby, I could not see anything,” Mythili told her sister.
In the process, she lost her precious time. A passersby spotted Parthiban and alerted an ambulance that picked him up from the road and rushed him to a hospital.
“When we reached the spot, the ambulance carrying Parthiban had just left. The ambulance staff did not know how he got burnt and also did not know that my daughter was also injured. We had to call another ambulance and wait for about 25 minutes to take her to Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital,” said Mythili’s mother Dhanalakshmi.
“She was crying for help and asking to save her. But we couldn’t do anything except wait for the ambulance to reach,” added Meena.
The family arrived after a call from a North Indian witness who told them Mythili was on fire.
Dhanalakshmi couldn’t understand immediately, as her daughter had called her about 10 minutes earlier to say she was walking towards home after getting down at the bus stop. The line got cut, but she assumed it to be a network problem.
“My son and I rushed to the spot and found her in fire and screaming for help,” she recalled. But even in that pain, Meena added, Mythili managed to pass on her mother’s number to one of the persons who
gathered, who, in turn, made the call to Dhanalakshmi.
Police believe Parthiban (24) was angry after Mythili decided to call off their two-and-half-year-long relationship owing to financial constraints.
On that day, Mythili had paid her college fees for the fourth semester in BSc Biology in Anna University. “She was very keen on studying, but had to work owing to our financial constraints. But after a year of work, she decided to pursue a degree through correspondence. She used to always tell me not to worry, saying that all financial problems would be over after she gets her degree in a year,” said Dhanalakshmi.
Mythili and Parthiban had met in a textile shop in Anna Nagar where they both worked. The acquaintance bloomed into a relationship. Six months ago, Parthiban met with an accident that forced him to quit his job.
Meanwhile, Mythili’s father also became seriously ill, which forced her to take up more responsibilities
at home. That is when she told him she could not continue the relationship.
The family, however, was not aware of the affair till she filed a police complaint against Parthiban for allegedly threatening her.
“That is when we learnt about the affair. Even then she had told him that she wanted to study and look after the family. But he kept troubling her, blackmailing her with their photos,” said Dhanalakshmi.
Murugan, her father, said amid tears that he had never even raised his hands against her daughters. “But today, someone burnt her alive because she stood up for the family,” he said.
Mythili is survived by her parents, two elder sisters and a younger brother who is pursuing his diploma course. Parthiban has his parents and two elder sisters.