No trace of KAS officer booked for wife's suicide

Police are yet to arrest a Karnataka Administrative Service (KAS) officer, who has been booked for driving his wife to suicide. Chaitra, the 21-year-old wife of Niranjan Babu, was found hanging in a paying guest accommodation at RMV Extension, north Bengaluru, on Wednesday.

A senior police officer said efforts were under way to trace Babu, who is assistant commissioner (land acquisition) in the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA).

Investigation revealed that the couple had met when Chaitra was as a stenographer in Food Corporation of India while Babu was a senior official there. Chaitra had left her parents around two years ago and moved in with Babu. The couple were living in Jayanagar. Chaitra told her friends about her marriage and posted about it on Facebook.

Her parents, however, disputed her marriage. In a complaint to the jurisdictional Sanjaynagar police, they said the couple were not married, but living together. According to them, Babu was “harassing” her. Unable to bear the torture, Chaitra left him. But he wooed her back and arranged for her stay in a paying guest accommodation, the officer said.