CHENNAI: The cold-blooded murder of a five-year-old boy by the paramour of his father in Vellore reminds us of a similar gruesome killing of a three-year-old boy Aditya in Chennai way back in July 2010. That woman, Poovarasi, a postgraduate to boot, is now in Puzhal jail serving life sentence. She too hailed from Vellore district - Thiruvalam village near Ranipet. Poovarasi, too, killed the child in her own dwelling and left the body there overnight before taking it out in a suitcase that she left in a bus on the Puducherry-Nagapattinam route.
Poovarasi, then 26, was in a relationship with Aditya’s father and her colleague, K Jayakumar. The child enjoyed the woman’s trust and went along with her to her second floor room in the YWCA hostel, where she strangulated him to death despite the boy crying: ‘Aunty, please do not kill me’. She then covered his face with a polythene bag and went to a church in Parry’s Corner, where she blacked out.
Interestingly, nuns in the church called Jayakumar from her mobile phone, kept in her Scooty parked outside the church.
When Jayakumar asked about his son, she feigned ignorance, saying that she had brought him to the church. She even went with Jayakumar once again in the night to ‘search’ for the boy before a missing person case was filed with the Esplanade police station.
That night Poovarasi slipped out of the hospital where she was admitted, went to her room, took the suitcase containing Aditya’s body to Koyambedu bus stand to catch the bus to Puducherry.
At Puducherry, she placed the suitcase inside a Nagapattinam-bound bus, told a woman passenger to take care of the luggage and returned to Chennai. The boy’s body was detected at Nagapattinam by the bus crew and it became a sensation all over the State with television channels beaming the image. When it came to light that a young woman had committed the diabolic crime in Chennai, it added to the sensation and collective grief of the people.
Poovarasi had then said that she killed the boy to avenge the betrayal and rejection by Jayakumar, who had forced her to abort the foetus that was conceived as a result of their relationship twice and had also been instrumental in her office transferring her to Madurai. She was to leave for Madurai a few days later, when Jayakumar had brought Aditya to office on that fateful Saturday. Poovarasi had met Jayakumar when there worked together in another office. When Jayakumar switched job, he took her too to the new office. He had also helped her buy the Scooty in which she took his son on his last ride and had been a source of moral support to her after her family members severed ties, objecting to her relationship with a married man. It was after she started pestering him to marry her that he had her transferred to Madurai.