CHENNAI: A 27-year-old woman was arrested on Tuesday after a postmortem revealed that her six-year-old son had died of strangulation after she choked him with her dupatta at their house in Vyasarpadi. Sources added that the death was accidental as the woman did not intend to kill him and had strangled him to teach him a lesson when he did it to his baby brother.
The accused, V Sivaranjani, allegedly tightened a dupatta around the boy’s neck while attempting to discipline him after he playfully choked his nine-month-old sibling using a sacred thread worn around the infant’s neck.
According to Vyasarpadi police, Sivaranjani lived with her second husband Veeraselvam (35), who works at a Tasmac bar, and her two sons S Krishnan (6) and nine-month-old V Mithran. Krishnan was born to Sivaranjani and her first husband, from whom she had separated after a family dispute.
Police sources said Krishnan was hyperactive and frequently disrupted classes in school, following which his parents stopped sending him to school.
On May 2, after Veeraselvam went to work, Sivaranjani was in the kitchen around 9 pm when she heard a loud noise from the bedroom. On entering the room, she allegedly found Krishnan pulling the sacred thread worn around Mithran’s neck, causing the infant to cry.
In a fit of rage, Sivaranjani allegedly took a dupatta and tightened it around Krishnan’s neck to show him how his brother would have felt, sources said. The child lost consciousness and died. Police said Sivaranjani did not inform anyone about the incident and placed the child on the bed as though he was asleep.
Veeraselvam returned home around 11 pm and slept without realising the incident. The next morning, when he stepped out, Sivaranjani called him and informed that Krishnan was unconscious. The couple rushed the child to Government Stanley Hospital, where doctors declared him dead. The body was later sent for postmortem.
During inquiry, police initially suspected Veeraselvam as he was the child’s stepfather. Sivaranjani also claimed that Krishnan sustained injuries after falling from a sofa and vomiting repeatedly. Based on the suspicious circumstances, police registered a case under suspicious death.
The postmortem conducted by a medical team at Government Stanley Hospital on May 4 concluded that the child died of asphyxiation caused by strangulation. When the police interrogated Sivaranjani again, she allegedly gave conflicting statements initially, but later admitted to the sequence of events. Based on the findings, police altered the case to murder and arrested Sivaranjani. She was remanded in judicial custody on Tuesday.
