Spurned youth commits suicide after bid to kill girl’s family in Valasaravakkam fails

The deceased, G Jeevanandam of Kayarlabath in Ariyalur district, was a graduate in horticulture. He reportedly met Keerthana (name changed) of Valasaravakkam at a conference in Gujarat in December 2018 and are said to be in contact since then.

Jeevanandam had already visited the girl’s family in the city twice earlier. Police said the girl started avoiding his phone calls of late as she felt he wanted more than her friendship.

However, Jeevanandam reached the girl’s house on September 29 claiming to have come to the city for certificate verification in the Income Tax department. He was entitled to a job on compassionate grounds as his deceased mother was an employee there.

On Friday night, he was allowed to sleep in the hall, and Keerthana, her father, who is a lecturer at a private college, mother, younger sister and a toddler were asleep inside the room. Around 3.15 am on Saturday, when the girl’s father woke up to the scent of LPG, he was shocked to find Jeevanandham standing inside the room with an LPG cylinder with regulator removed from the stove. “He then opened the regulator, lit the lighter and fire spit from the hose with noise,” said the girl’s father.

Immediately he pushed Jeevanandam out of the room before locking himself up with family members in the room. A few minutes later, they heard a noise of someone breaking a mirror in the verandah. When they rushed out, Jeevanandam had locked the main door from outside and blood was running on the floor

They immediately alerted the police control room, who reached the spot and found Jeevanandham lying in a pool of blood. Police opened the door and asked the family to rush him to the hospital.

The girl and his father took Jeevanandham to the nearby private hospital and then to Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, where he was declared brought dead.

Valasaravakkam police have registered a case. Police said Jeevarandham’s parents passed away a few years ago and he along with his brother stayed with their grandmother. “Since he addressed the girl’s parents amma and appa, they too were compassionate about him. A few hours before the incident, the girl’s father saw him walking up and down the hall and gave him a bedsheet and asked him to sleep,” said a police official. He said there’s no suspicion on the family yet. The girl and her mother suffered minor burns since Jeevanandham opened fire towards their head.