Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu:
The post-mortem report of Ilavarasan, whose inter-caste marriage had led to riots in his village in Tamil Nadu, reveals the 21-year-old died of a head injury. Police sources have said that the death is a case of suicide.
However, the Madras High Court on Friday has asked for the body to be preserved till Tuesday. A video of the autopsy will be shared with Ilavarasan's family, who will then have to decide if they want another post-mortem to be done. The family has alleged Ilavarasan, whose body was found near a railway track on Thursday, was murdered.
Ilavarasan, a Dalit, married Divya Nagaraj, a girl from the Vanniyars, an upper-caste Hindu community, in August. A day after Ilavarasan's body was found, the Madras High Court ordered the government to give security to Divya.
Their love story was stalked from the beginning by political agendas.
Weeks after they eloped, Divya's father committed suicide. After his death, nearly 200 huts owned by Dalits in and around Ilavasaran's village of Dharmapuri in western Tamil Nadu were set on fire. Parties with a strong Dalit votebank blamed Divya's community for the riots, and said the violence had been backed by the PMK, headed by S Ramadoss and openly committed to preventing inter-caste marriages.
Seven months after her father's suicide, Divya returned to her parental home to live with her mother, who had filed a case in the Madras High Court asking for Divya to be released from "unlawful detention". Divya returned while her mother's petition was still pending. On Wednesday, Divya told the Madras High Court she would not return to Ilavasaran.
Ilavasaran's mother holds the PMK responsible for her son's death; the party has denied any links to the tragedy. "They killed my son. My son didn't kill himself," she said.