Spurned youth slits lover’s neck with broken liquor bottle

Vadavalli police who are investigating the case said that the accused A. Vemburaj (28) of Muthukalathur in Ramnad District is a B.E. Civil engineering graduate. He has been working in a leading private firm in Chennai for seven years and is currently unemployed. About a year ago he befriended the victim M. Kanagalakshmi (21) of Uppara Street in Gandhi Park, Coimbatore, through facebook. 

According to the police, he had fallen in love with her and insisted her to marry him. The girl is said to have changed her mobile number as Vemburaj continued disturbing her. Knowing that the girl was studying 1st year MCA at Bharathiar University at the outskirts of the city he went there to meet her at the university bus stop on the Vadavalli to Maruthamalai Road on Wednesday.

An argument broke out between them as she turned down his plea to marry him. In a fit of anger, he attacked her with a broken empty liquor bottle. Kanagalakshmi suffered a cut on her neck and was rushed to a private hospital by the horrified students who were there. The police said it was not a deep cut and she was out of danger. 

Based on a complaint preferred by the victim, Vemburaj was booked under sections 294 (B) (using abusive language), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt through dangerous weapon) and 506(ii) (threat to life) of the Indian Penal Code and section 4 of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Women Harassment Act. He was arrested and remanded the same night. 

The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has made an appeal to the police to take such incidents seriously and book the accused under sections that would attract strong punishments. Its district secretary A. Radhika questioned the police for not booking Vemburaj for attempt to murder. 

Expressing concern over recent incidents of murders and attempts on the lives of innocent girls by spurned lovers, she said the police have to play an active role to put an end to such incidents.

“In many instances police compromise and settle the issue without booking the men accused of harassing the girls,”she said and recalled incidents in Salem and Thoothukudi where girls committed suicide as the police did not act against the men who were harassing them.