[1]The tragedy of Dhyriya Lakshmi, the first-year Anna University student who committed suicide in college hostel Tuesday, continued even on her journey to the grave.
Her farm-worker father did not have enough money to take the body home in Villupuram district and was forced to hitch a ride on an ambulance carrying a dead driver Wednesday afternoon.
K. Sakthivel had sold land to pay for Lakshmi’s education and saved a small portion to take care of her remaining tenure at the Guindy college.
Her suicide, reportedly due to academic stress, destroyed the family’s dream of seeing the girl graduate as an engineer.
The father picked up all his savings and arrived in Chennai Wednesday morning to take the body to native KV Palayam village, about 300 km south of Chennai, for last rites.
But there was no government ambulance to transport the body free of cost, while private operators demanded Rs 8,000.
“We brought all the money we had saved for Lakshmi’s studies but that was not enough for the ambulance fare. Some persons came from Anna University but disappeared after telling us they had arranged for postmortem at Kilpauk Medical College Hospital,” said Sakthivel’s cousin Nehru.
DC photographer N. Sampath helped the family. He called KMC’s free ambulance service but found the only vehicle available was booked to take the body of a 55-year-old driver to Salem.
“Since we didn’t have enough money for a private ambulance, we pleaded with KMC officials to allow us hitch a ride. We were dropped near our village,” said Nehru before breaking down.
Lakshmi was the eldest of Sakthivel’s three daughters. The second daughter works in a bookstore after completing school and the third is waiting for her plus-two result.
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