CHENNAI: Ilavarasan, the dalit youth who braved a caste backlash and married a vanniyar woman in November lat year, was found dead on a railway track in Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu on Thursday afternoon. Police said his body was found on a track behind the Dharmapuri Arts College at 3pm. His body has been sent for postmortem examination to the government hospital in the town.

On Wednesday, his wife Divya, who had left him to stay with her mother, apparently following social pressure, had told reporters in Chennai that she had no plans to go back to her husband. The two had eloped and married against the wishes of her parents last year, prompting her father Natarajan to commit suicide. This triggered a major caste uproar between the most backward vanniyar caste and dalits.

Dalit houses were torched and the issue, which simmered for months, also ignited further caste unrest in April this year in the wake of a conference organised by the PMK, a party whose mainstay is the vanniyar community. The party's founder S Ramadoss, who had launched a major campaign against inter-caste marriages last year, was arrested along with his son and former Union minister Anbumani. Several other party functionaries were picked up and detained under the NSA and Goondas Act for the month-long violence unleashed by cadres across the state.

Divya, who had been living with Ilavarasan under police protection, appeared in the Madras high court last month in response to a habeas corpus plea filed by her mother last year. She said she chose to end her marriage with Ilavarasan and preferred to stay with her mother.

