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| Sushma Vemula |
Hyderabad, Nov. 22: A young Indian homemaker has been found dead in her bedroom in America, with her parents here dismissing claims of suicide and linking the death to alleged dowry demands.
Sushma Vemula, 24, had married software engineer Goli Suresh Babu in April last year before the couple left for Northridge city near Los Angeles in August. She died on Thursday afternoon but her parents say neither Suresh nor his parents in Hyderabad told them anything.
“We received a call yesterday morning from a relative in Los Angeles who said my daughter was dead,” Sushma’s father V. Kanakarajam, a retired state power corporation engineer, said.
“I have been trying to contact my son-in-law but he keeps disconnecting the call without replying. We suspect foul play.”
US police have said they do not suspect foul play, an officer here told reporters.
Kanakarajam said the relative, Harika, had told him that Suresh had called her on Thursday and invited her home saying he wanted to discuss a domestic problem. When Harika arrived at the flat, she was told Sushma had committed suicide and her body had been taken away for autopsy.
“The police had taken the body away before she (Harika) reached the spot,” Kanakarajam said, adding that Harika wasn’t told how Sushma had killed herself.
“My daughter spoke to me quite often but there had been no calls in the past three days,” said Sushma’s mother, V. Bhagya. The family said Suresh’s family was refusing to talk to them.
Kanakarajam claimed he had shelled out Rs 10 lakh in dowry after spending a huge sum on the wedding, but his daughter began to be tortured within months of the marriage. He said Suresh had complained he was dissatisfied with the scale of the wedding and also with the dowry.
“It’s impossible that Sushma killed herself. She had no reason to end her life; she was a strong-willed person,” her uncle Laxmirajam said.
Sushma had graduated as an engineer from a Hyderabad college and worked with a private bank for a year before her wedding. Her younger brother Vamshi was to leave for the US in a couple of days to do his master’s.
Sushma is the second housewife from Andhra Pradesh to have died in the US under mysterious circumstances in the past one month.
Jayalakshmi, 37, was found dead with her two children in their apartment in Novi township near Detroit on October 27. Her jobless husband Lakshminivasa Rao Nerusu, a computer programmer, has been charged with the murders.
Five students from Andhra Pradesh have been murdered in America in the past one year, and a sixth in Britain.