VELLORE: Tension prevailed in Chinnavenkatapuram near Ambur following the suicide of a 50-year-old man belonging to the Vanniyar community allegedly after his elder daughter eloped with her lover, a Dalit youth, a couple of days ago.
The family members and relatives of Panneerselvam, who killed himself on Tuesday, refused to receive his body. After Panneerselvam did not return for a long time on Tuesday morning, his family members searched for him and found him dead at Kanar near Venkatasamuthram with froth in his mouth. His death triggered a protest that continued on Wednesday as well.
The incident brought back memories of the death of Dalit youth E Ilavarasan in Dharmapuri last year. Ilavarasan’s Vanniyar wife N Divya had walked out on him under “community pressure”. Ilavarasan’s marriage with Divya and the subsequent suicide of her father Nagarajan had triggered widespread communal violence in pockets of Dharmapuri.
The presence of former PMK MP and MLAs N T Shanmugam, T K Raja and K L Elavazhagan and party functionaries triggered speculation that it could seek to politicise the issue. Police sources said the PMK cadre were instigating the protest. They lodged a complaint stating that Vignesh Kumar, with whom Panneerselvam’s daughter Ilavarasi had eloped, and his friend Sankar (23) had threatened him, hours before he committed suicide by consuming pesticide.
“Vignesh called Panneerselvam and told him not to file a case against him and his friends. He threatened that if he does so, they will abduct his two other daughters also,” said Elavazhagan.