Who killed Rithanya?

The suicide of 27-year-old newlywed woman Rithanya in June 2025 sent waves of shock across Tamil Nadu. The news channels were quick to label it as a case of dowry harassment , following which the media started its coverage campaign 24×7. Rithanya’s husband Kavin and his parents were arrested following public outrage. Many such incidents came to light. While dowry harassment is a real evil that is very much prevalent in Tamil Nadu, did Rithanya really decide to end her life because of dowry or something else? Let’s find out. 

Rithanya, born to R.G. Annadurai and Jayasudha, held a master's degree and was a young social entrepreneur. Though not many details are available on the internet, she reportedly ran a startup that trained women from rural areas in Aari embroidery, thus enabling them to earn a living. She charged very little for women from underprivileged backgrounds. I believe she started her business out of passion rather than a necessity to earn a livelihood because her father was financially well-off. He reportedly married off his daughter by offering her 200 sovereigns (i.e., 1600 grams of gold) and promised to offer 300 sovereigns when Rithanya becomes a mother, in a grand wedding. Several other compliments were offered by her father in cash or kind. Kavin’s parents were no less affluent. From what I could make out from a few third-party contacts, Kavin’s parents were much more affluent than Rithanya’s. 

As per Rithanya’s father R.G. Annadurai’s statement, when he started looking for a groom for his daughter, she had just one demand: the groom should be financially independent—in the sense that he must run an independent business. It is not a far-fetched demand considering the fact that her father, a successful wealthy entrepreneur himself, would seek a proposal from a similarly affluent family, not someone who was on a payroll.

Kavin, son of Eashwaramoorthy and Chitra Devi, was finalised. He was everything you could ask for, Rithanya’s father assured her. He was aspiring to get into civil services and had lost his candidature in the last attempt by a few marks atleast that was what Rithanya's parents told her. He was working hard to get in this year. Even if those attempts failed, he already had a digital marketing venture through which he earned a considerable sum of money. He was everything Rithanya wanted after all—the financially independent, ambitious young man who was her match. After all, she set out on a path for financial independence despite being an affluent father’s daughter.

She agreed. Her father sent her off to her in-laws’ palatial mansion, which was only five minutes away from her house, in a car that cost ₹75 lakh—the same car in which, 78 days later, Rithanya would take her own life.

Rithanya told her parents that she wouldn’t get into the family way soon and would rather support her “ambitious husband” who was appearing for the civil services in the next sitting. It came as a shock to her, after their marriage, that he was not interested in it anymore. The so-called digital marketing entrepreneur would leave the house for a few hours a day and minted close to ₹30,000 per month. Mind you, he didn’t have the need to make a living nor depend on dowry. His parents readily banked generational wealth. He just needed to chill.

From the audio recordings she had sent to her father, and from what she said to her near and dear ones, her husband had intense, unnatural sexual desires (this is not explicit, but only an inference made from her audio recordings, where she said in a teary tone: “Ennala avan kooda physical-a irukka mudiyala, pa.”) Raised with a lot of love from her parents, Rithanya’s incompatibility issues with her husband and the nonchalant attitude of her in-laws bothered her.

She complained to her parents. Very clearly, they asked her to stay in the marriage, citing prestige issues—from what I could gather from her parents’ interviews. Both sets of parents liked to play the blame game. They are grieving, yes, but R.G. Annadurai has gone to the extent of saying he is proud of his daughter because she upheld Tamil culture’s “one woman for one man” norm (?????). Though her parents now pass the blame to her husband, it was likely they who cited her father’s recent bypass surgery when she expressed her desire to move back with them. While her parents didn’t actually threaten to slam the door on her return, they implicitly stated that her father’s reputation and health would be at risk if she were to separate from her husband.  

Unable to escape, on a fine morning, Rithanya steered her car—the same car gifted by her father upon her wedding—to a Narasimhar temple located near fields. Along with her, the car also carried a bottle of pesticide. For one last time, Rithanya offered her prayers to God. She perhaps asked God to accept her, at least. She only finished half of the prasadam offered at the temple. She drove a little further into an isolated location where only farm workers were around, sent her final messages to her parents, gulped down the pesticide she carried, and breathed her last. 

The audio recorded by her before she took her life made rounds on the internet. Nowhere in the audio did she mention that her husband and in-laws pressured her for money. She even mentioned the place where she stored her jewellery (if her in-laws wanted to milk money, they would have readily pocketed the cash and jewellery offered to her). She did call them out. While Rithanya’s father complains that the son-in-law pressed him for money to start his own venture, sources say it was common among such affluent families to help the son-in-law start his own business, and that it was Rithanya’s father who had promised them the money.

At any rate, it was he who turned a deaf ear to his daughter. Instead of listening to her concerns about the groom he himself chose—based on wealth and status—he stood by his commitments. When his daughter cited issues in her marriage, he didn’t have the heart to call her back. Asked to “adjust”, Rithanya quit. 

Was her husband and in-laws responsible for her death? Yes—but only partially. And I need not say who the major player was. I only wish weddings could be about a couple living together, and not a symbol of social prestige.