TUMAKURU: A sixteen-year-old girl who was forced into wedlock with a man against her wishes on Sunday committed suicide at Ranganathapura village in Sira taluk on Tuesday.
The Sira police, who had allegedly tried to hush up the case, finally arrested four persons including the parents of both bride and groom. The groom, however, managed to abscond.
The deceased was identified as Sudha, a first-year PUC student, who was married to her relative Madhu. She was found hanging on Tuesday and the parents had shifted her to the hospital in Sira where she breathed her last.
Her parents Honnesh and Pushpa and Madhu's parents Varadaraju and Vanajakshi have been arrested and booked under the POCSO Act and sent to judicial custody.
The parents of both bride and groom were living in Bengaluru and the girl was living in the village where the wedding was conducted. The women and child development department's supervisor Sureskha Thake had lodged a complaint with the police.
The concerned supervisor of Neralagudda village Jayalakshmi was not working due to the lockdown as she is based in Hiriyuru taluk and hence the wedding went unnoticed, the Sira Child Development Programme Officer Kempahanumaiah informed The New Indian Express.
"We had asked the supervisors to work three days a week. If there was no lockdown, the incident would have come to our notice much earlier," he maintained.