VISAKHAPATNAM: A day after 20-year-old P Roopa was set afire by her stalker, her brother who was being treated at the KGH for burns sustained while trying to save her succumbed to his injuries on Sunday.
According to hospital authorities, Upendra who was admitted to the hospital with 80 percent burns breathed his last in the wee hours of Sunday.
The parents who lost both their children were inconsolable. Sources said the 15-year-old Class X student of a government high school was the topper of his class. Upendra’s friends who had come to see his parents said he wanted to become a police officer. Hari Santhosh murdered Roopa, a second year BSc student, by setting her on fire at her home in T Nagarapalem of Bheemili for turning down his proposal on Saturday. After committing the crime, Santosh killed put his head under a train.
Roopa’s uncle P Ramu said the family had in the past warned Santosh against stalking Roopa, who had stopped going to college for a few months as she was unable to bear his advances. “We had planned to put an end to this torture. But it is too late now. We have lost everything,” he said. Sources said Roopa’s biological mother had walked out of the family when she was just five-years-old, after which her father remarried. Since then, the siblings have been living with their grandparents. Sources close to the family said Roopa filled the vacuum her mother had left in Upendra’s life.