Little Srivalli doesn’t know why passers-by look at her sympathetically. The two-year-old girl — clad in a frock and carrying a biscuit in her hands — sits on the platform of Brahmanpally railway station in Toopran of Medak district apparently waiting for her parents.
And the tiny tot is unaware that her father Onteddu Kashi Nani and mother Devendra will never return. The couple committed suicide by jumping before a train in the early hours of Thursday, after leaving their child on the platform.
Onlookers, passengers and railway workers were moved by the plight of the child. “It was disturbing to see the girl in that condition. She must be thinking that her parents would come back to fetch her,” a passenger said.
Railway police officials said that Nani, hailing from Padmajiwada of Kamareddy town, fell in love with Devendra of the same area a few years ago and got married against the wishes of both families.
A post on Facebook page in the name of Kashi Nani stated that he and his wife were ending their lives as his in-laws and wife’s close relatives were trying to separate them.
Addressing the message to the Chief Minister, Nani stated that his in-laws and relatives repeatedly told them to die.
“We are dying .... truth will come out if you take action against them,” he said in the message. Interestingly, the post (which was seen earlier in the day and screenshots of which were clicked by journalists) disappeared by evening. Investigators believe the couple along with the kid arrived at Brahmanpally railway station on Wednesday night.
When some workers sought to know why they were there, the couple replied that they had got off there accidentally and would catch another train on Thursday morning. No one had seen them committing suicide. But the railway police surmise the couple left the child on the platform and jumped before the train on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday.
A railway keyman saw the mutilated bodies of the couple in the morning and informed the higher-ups who called in the railway police. Bodies were shifted to Kamareddy railway hospital for autopsy.
Railway police officer Rama Rao informed The Hindu that Srivalli was handed over to her maternal grandmother Lakshmi.
