The alleged suicide of a 16-year-old girl, after she eloped with a Dalit youth and was abandoned by her parents, turned out to be yet another honour killing in the district. The police arrested her father on the charge of smothering her to death with a pillow while she was asleep.

The incident, the second after the death of the 22-year-old pregnant women in March in this communally sensitive district, came to light Thursday when the police found that the girl had not committed suicide by consuming poison as her parents had claimed.

“The post-mortem report revealed that she had died of asphyxiation and the chemical report, too, confirmed that there was no trace of poison,” Superintendent of Police N.M. Mylvahanan told The Hindu on the phone. It was a case of honour killing, and the police arrested the girl’s father A. Allirajan, 40, of Kadhaiyan near Mudukulathur. The girl was sleeping at home when Allirajan, a casual labour at the local power plant, killed her. When the police confronted him with the post-mortem and chemical reports, he admitted to the crime.

As the victim had not taken any food for a couple of days before her death, he had obtained a suicide note from her; after killing her, he bought a bottle of poison to make it out that it was a case of suicide, the police said. After the local police registered it as a “suspicious death,” the SP formed a special investigation team as there was an element of doubt.

The girl was awaiting the SSLC results when she eloped with R. Saranraj, 22, of the same village on May 16. After Allirajan lodged a complaint with the police and filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, Saranraj made the girl to surrender before a judicial magistrate court at Sivaganga on May 22. The next day, she was produced before the Mudukulathur judicial magistrate court.

Before sending the girl home, the Mudukulathur magistrate sought an undertaking from her parents for the safety of the girl. But they refused to take her back.

The magistrate sent the girl to a home in Madurai. Even as she was staying there, the High Court heard the petition on June 11 and entrusted the girl to her parents. However, the girl was sent to her aunt’s house at Bhavani in Erode and she came to visit her parents on July 3. Three days later, she was found dead.