When online friendships lure students afar for a fatal lesson

Recently, a young man who had harassed school girls was found buried near a stream in Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu. R. Sivaraman reports on the events leading to his death that highlight once again the tragic consequences of young students befriending strangers online

The December rains had finally stopped and the sun had emerged from the shadows. It was a bright Saturday morning on December 18, 2021, when residents of Periya Obulapuram, a village in Gummidipoondi taluk of Tiruvallur district in north Tamil Nadu, woke up to the wailing sirens of police vehicles whizzing past on the potholed road.

Sandwiched between Chennai and Sri City, an integrated business city bordering Andhra Pradesh, the village had not seen such police activity in the recent past. The police vehicles halted on a vast tract of barren land near a stream. Surrounded by the huge compound wall of a steel manufacturing company on the southern side and agricultural fields on the northern and western side, the tract leads to Eechan Kadu Medu, a hamlet close to Periya Obulapuram, a short distance away from the national highways.