india

Updated: Nov 20, 2019 17:49 IST

The mother of a 17-year-old girl allegedly burnt her alive before setting herself afire in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district on Tuesday, police said.

Nagapattinam’s deputy police superintendent, N Murugavel, said that the two got into a heated argument over some dispute before the mother poured kerosene on the girl and later set her herself on fire too.

Police said that the mother was struggling for her life at a Nagapattinam hospital. The incident came to light after the girl died late on Tuesday night.

A 24-year-old Dalit neighbour on Wednesday claimed that the 17-year-old was burnt alive because she wanted to marry him. He claimed that the girl had been in a relationship with him since 2016.

“As her mother... was against the relationship, she stopped her from attending school since last year when she was studying in Class 11. As she would have turned 18, we planned to seek her permission to marry...” He said that the girl was burnt alive as she refused to accept her mother’s advice to end the relationship.

He claimed his caste was the primary reason for the alleged murder of the girl, who belongs to an Other Backward Class (OBC) caste.

Murugavel said that they have registered an attempt to murder case. He added that they have not received any hate crime complaint from the Dalit man. “We have been talking to the relatives of... [the girl].” He added that as of now they have not found anything that would suggest that it was a hate crime.

The Dalit man said that he would approach the police to register a case of hate crime.