KURNOOL: A 43-year-old roadside vendor, G Varadarajulu, committed suicide on Sunday by consuming acid after he and his wife Sujatha were thrashed by a police sub-inspector in Dhone town of Kurnool district.
Later, his wife and relatives staged a demonstration at the district collectorate seeking action against the sub-inspector.
Varadarajulu, who eked out a living by selling peanuts near a wine shop in Dhone, had some differences with another street vendor Fathima near the shop since the last few days. On Friday, both of them quarrelled and Fathima, with the help of six men, thrashed Varadarajulu.
On the same day evening, both Varadarajulu and Fathima lodged police complaints against each other but the police sent them away without registering any case. Feeling frustrated over not getting justice, Varadarajulu and Sujatha along with a few relatives went to the police station again to ask the cops to register a case and give him justice.
When the police again tried to send them away dismissing it as a petty issue, Varadarajulu and his wife questioned the attitude of the cops in not taking their complaint seriously. “We only asked why the police were not registering a case. Sub-inspector V Srinivasulu came out and tried to beat me. My husband tried to intervene but he was thrashed,” Sujatha told Express.
The couple returned home feeling humiliated and when elders in the family asked them what happened, the two broke down and related their woes to their elders.
On Sunday, Sujatha woke up early but found that her husband was not there on her side. She went to the bathroom and found him lying unconscious on the floor. With the help of her in-laws and other relatives, she rushed him to the government hospital.