By Umaima Shafiq
Leading actor Bala Murali kills himself in Chennai
Leading television actor C Bala Murali Mohan committed suicide by hanging from a ceiling fan at his house in Landon’s Road in Kilpauk in Chennai on June 26.
He was 54 and survived by his wife and a son who lives in the US.
Bala Murali reportedly committed suicide when his wife Sumathi was away to attend a wedding. He watched a football match with his sister living in a floor below but left half way to go to bed. When Sumathi returned and there was no response to her ringing, she peeped through the bedroom window to discover Bala Murali’s body.
The cause of death is unclear and police said there was no suicide note. Bala Murali has acted in films like Boys and Allithanda Vaanam and television serials like Vamsam and Thendral.
Also in Chennai, K Yogalakshmi, a 19-year-old nursing and trauma care student committed suicide by hanging at her hostel room at the Sri Ramachandra Medical College at Porur.
Police arrested her roommate Kotteswari for abetting the suicide. In a suicide note, Yogalakshmi accused Kotteswari, a senior student, of harassing her to stop dating her ex-boyfriend. The boy was also a classmate.
In yet another case, a 16-year-old girl attempted suicide after being beaten up by her hostel warden at Dharmapuri. The girl overdosed on sleeping tablets but was saved by alert hostel mates.
The warden had beaten up and locked the girl after denying her permission to meet her parents who had visited the previous weekend. The warden was suspended. However many private residential schools in southern districts follow a military regimen to prepare students for competitive exams.
Four arrested, passport racket busted
The Central Crime Branch (CCB) arrested four men including two Sri Lankan nationals involved in a fake passport and visa racket in Chennai last week.
Acting on a tip-off, police caught Krishnamurthy who had been forging passports from 2005, his accomplices Rajan and Abubacker Siddique among others.
The gang reportedly forged more than 150 passports and sent over 100 people to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and European countries. Police also recovered bogus seals, stamps and printing equipment.
They reportedly sent ‘clients’ to get valid visas from foreign consulates in Chennai using the fake passports that often had ‘genuine’ stamps of previous visits to that country. After the visas were issued, the ‘clients’ were sent abroad.
Police are investigating the involvement of immigration and customs authorities in the racket.
Meanwhile, four men have been arrested for printing and circulating fake notes at Tiruvallur in suburban Chennai. The gang was caught red-handed during a transaction in a public street.
Three dead in firecracker unit blaze
Three workers were killed in an explosion at a firecracker manufacturing unit in Sivakasi town in southern Virudhunagar district about 40km from the temple city of Madurai. The blaze also razed eight sheds inside the open air factory. Fortunately many workers had gone out for a tea break during the accident.
In the same town two days later, a factory worker and three slum-dwellers died when a unit manufacturing cracker fuse caught fire. Police say the extreme heat could have triggered the explosion.
In a separate incident, two men were killed during a fireworks display at a temple festival near Kallakurichi in Villupuram district about 150km from Chennai. A temple procession was going on when some men ignited a sack of firecrackers in quick succession.
Virudhunagar district is a hub for manufacturing firecrackers, match sticks and printed matter like diaries, brochures, calendars, posters, printout sheets and others.