Udayakumar, a fourth-year student of the college where the victim Sonali also studied, had proposed to the girl and was spurned, police sources said. He had contacted her over mobile phone on several occasions but she had not responded. Apparently angered over her refusal to talk to him, Udayakumar had attacked her.
Sonali’s father had died recently and she was supported by her mother working in Chennai. Her relatives, who had assembled in large numbers at the hospital in Madurai, complained that the principal and representatives of college management went incommunicado soon after the incident. The college employees, including teaching staff, who had accompanied Sonali from Karur to Madurai, had quietly left the hospital without giving adequate information to the relatives.
“The college principal and the other management committee members were not taking our phone calls. They even refused to attend the calls made by the police officials here,” alleged Sonali’s uncle, K. Rajesh Khanna.
Mr. Rajesh said the college authorities had informed Sonali’s grandparents in Parthibanur that she had fallen sick.
“When I called the college staff, they maintained the same. However, when I insisted that I should talk to her, they revealed that she was attacked inside the classroom. Was it not the responsibility of the college management to provide the basic security to its students, especially girls,” he asked.
He wondered why the girl, who was heavily bleeding, was brought all the way from Karur to distant Madurai, while super speciality hospitals were available in Tiruchi, which was nearby.
Sonali’s relatives refused to allow the body to be taken to the Government Rajaji hospital for post-mortem. “I pleaded with her to discontinue her engineering course due to the ill- health of my brother (Sonali’s father). I wanted to marry her off,” Mr. Rajesh said. But the girl had declined.
