Pregnant woman set on fire by father dies

TRICHY: A 27-year-old pregnant woman, who was set on fire along with her mother by her father earlier this month, succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday.The deceased, V Swathi, who was seven months pregnant, was admitted to the Mahatma Gandhi Government Memorial Hospital and was undergoing critical care treatment for a total of 17 days before being declared dead on May 30.The incident took place on May 13 when S Vijayasekar, 58, who was running a bakery, executed a plan to kill his wife, Malliga, 45, and daughter after a dispute over the latter secretly marrying a police constable. Accordingly, he poured petrol on them when they were in the bakery and lit fire. Malliga succumbed to injuries and died the next morning . He initially enacted a drama to the police that it was a fire accident, which was caused due to the leakage of LPG, but the Palakkarai police station personnel, after investigation, arrested Vijayasekar. Police had stated that Vijayasekar opposed to the love affair of Swathi with Thangavelu, a 29-year-old police constable.Thangavelu and Swathi, had secretly got married in September 2017 but lived with their respective parents. In this scenario, Swathi got pregnant and Thangavelu wanted her to move in with him. Though Malliga approved this, Vijayasekar was against it and committed the crime. Based on Thangavelu’s complaint police arrested Vijayasekar.