Chennai:
11 days after he was found dead on a train track, a second autopsy report will aim to furnish more information on what may have killed 21-year-old Ilavarasan. His family says he was murdered for daring to fight for his love for a woman from a higher caste; the police alleges he committed suicide, shattered by his wife's declaration that she wanted out of the marriage that was punished with retributive politics in Tamil Nadu.
The first autopsy of Ilavarasan was filmed and a copy was shared with his family. A second was ordered by the Madras High Court earlier this month, which asked for three doctors from Delhi's famous AIIMS to handle the proceedings.
The first report said that the young man died of head injuries.
Nearly a month before Ilavarasan died, his wife, Divya Nagaraj, told the High Court that she did not plan on returning to him. She said neither her in-laws nor her husband had wronged her, but that she was unable to persevere in a marriage that had caused her father to commit suicide.
He killed himself, allegedly unable to bear the taunts - and there were loud, vicious ones - of his daughter marrying a Dalit. In the days after his suicide, nearly 200 huts around where Ilavarasan lived had been set on fire. Families blamed the PMK, a political party headed by S Ramadoss, for instigating the violence to prove it would not tolerate inter-caste marriages.
The party has denied any links to the violence or to Ilavarasan's death.
He was buried on Sunday in his village, with hundreds defying a government order banning large processions to attend his last rites.
Ilavarasan's family now plans to turn his burial site into a memorial with a library and a gym. "Inter-caste couples can come here to take inspiration from Ilavarasan," his father Ilango said.