Corporation worker breaks wife’s legs suspecting her fidelity

CHENNAI: A 37-year-old contract worker with the city corporation is undergoing treatment at a private facility in Andhra Pradesh after her husband, also a corporation worker, broke her legs, allegedly suspecting her fidelity, and confined her to the house. Three days after the attack on February 18, N Vijayalakshmi escaped and was admitted to the Government Royapettah Hospital (GRH) before being taken to the facility in Puthur, Andhra Pradesh.
According to V S Lingaperumal, an activist, the woman told a sub-inspector who visited her in hospital about the incident but he only issued a community service register (CSR) and “buried the case” despite recording her statement. Vijayalakshmi was later forced to withdraw her complaint due to pressure from her family, Lingaperumal said.
When contacted, her mother Vijaya said her daughter had been attacked and her legs broken by “some neighbours” and that she had been sent to a facility in Puthur. The woman, however, refused to say who was involved in the attack.
Lingaperumal said trouble for Vijayalakshmi began during the marriage of her daughter Sudarshana at Gudur in Nellore district when a relative, S Yuvaraj, supported her during a quarrel. Since then, her husband Raji, 57, began suspecting her fidelity as Yuvaraj and Vijayalakshmi worked together in the Alandur zone. Separately, Vijayalakshmi’s brother Narasimha, also a corporation conservancy worker, was bitter with her as she planned to claim ownership of their father’s property at Jothiammal Nagar in Saidapet.
Unable to bear her husband’s torture, Vijayalakshmi lodged a complaint with Lingaperumal who approached the Saidapet police and a CSR was issued. Enraged by this, on February 18, her husband Raji smashed Vijayalakshmi’s legs with an iron rod, fracturing them. Her brother Narasimha also attacked her.
On February 21, Yuvaraj received a call from Vijayalakshmi at 3am. “She told me she escaped from her house when the others were sleeping and that she was at Ambal Nagar bus terminus in Ekattuthangal,” Yuvaraj said.
Yuvaraj rushed there after informing Lingaperumal and the two men admitted her to the GRH. “The same day she was discharged from the hospital taken home without proper treatment. Her life is danger at her house,” said Lingaperumal. Saidapet law and order police inspector D Vijayaramulu said, “It was a family dispute and the woman suffered minor injuries on her legs. Despite the woman not pursuing her complaint, we probed the case.”