Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada   

Boy, girl end lives in suicide pact

Staff Reporter

Family members' opposition to their marriage plan cited as reason

VIJAYAWADA: An 18-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl committed suicide on the Gunadala hill by consuming pesticide. In separate suicide notes addressed to their parents and the police, they said that they were left with no option but to take the extreme step due to the resistance from both families to their marriage. As they had been in love for the last six years, they could not imagine separation, they said in the letters.

A watchman in Mary Matha shrine spotted the bodies in a highly decomposed condition on Tuesday morning and alerted the shrine authorities, who informed the Machavaram police.

The boy was identified as Kodamala Chaitanya, a daily labourer, and the girl was Surapakula Lakshmi, an Intermediate student. Both were residents of Konikikattavari Palem of Inkollu mandal in Prakasam district. They left home on June 5 and their bodies lay under a tree, over 200 metres from the grotto, on the hill.

The police suspected that they might have consumed pesticide three or four days ago. They found a 200-page long notebook, a packet of dates and an empty sachet of `Sevin,' a pesticide used for spraying on vegetable gardens, besides a bank passbook of Lakshmi.

The couple wrote separate suicide notes to their parents and another to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Vijayawada. Lakshmi, in her two-page note, appealed to her parents to forgive her for committing suicide. She appealed to her parents to take care of her elder brother and to convey her regards to all their relatives.

Chaitnya wanted his parents to be friendly with the family members of Lakshmi. "Grandfather rejected the proposal of my marriage with Lakshmi, as she is physically challenged. He threatened that he would commit suicide if I marry her. I can't live without Lakshmi and I can't lose grandfather by marrying her," he said in the note. He apologised to his father for "escaping from the responsibility of supporting the family," and urged him to take care of his younger brother.

Joint letter to ACP

In a joint letter addressed to the ACP, they appealed to the police not to send their bodies for a postmortem. "You will consider the last wish of prisoners before awarding capital punishment to them. Kindly concede our last wish too," they wrote in the note. The police, however, sent the bodies for postmortem.

Family members of Chaitanya and Lakshmi reached the city by evening. "We are under the impression that they left home only to get married," said Kodamala Babu, uncle of Chaitanya. Lakshmi's father Chinna Ramayya said: "I would have agreed for the marriage, if Lakshmi clearly told me that she wanted to marry Chaitanya."

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