LAHORE: A teenage boy allegedly committed suicide after the girl he loved told him that her parents had fixed her marriage with a relative.

Employed at an electronics shop on Hall Road, Sohail, 17, allegedly hanged himself with the ceiling fan of his rented quarter near Lakshmi Chowk. The boy attempted to convince the girl, failing which he filmed his suicide on his mobile phone and showed it to the girl on video call.

Qila Gujjar Singh Deputy Superintendent of Police Raja Fakhar Bashir told Dawn that the boy was a resident of Okara and lived in a rented quarter along with two other boys.

He was alleged to have an affair with a girl of the same locality.

Quoting initial inquiries, Bashir said Sohail had got dejected when the girl told him that she wanted to end their relationship as her parents had fixed her marriage with someone else. He got a piece of cloth and sent her its photographs, saying he was going to end his life. Sohail later dialed a video call and committed suicide on camera.

On seeing him tie a rope around his neck, the girl immediately forwarded screenshots to Sohail’s employer, requesting him to stop the boy. Bashir said the employer rushed to the quarter, but it was too late.

The employer alerted police that reached the site and recovered the boy’s body.

His parents were informed of the incident, who reached Lahore immediately. They refused to get a postmortem conducted and the police handed over the body to the family after completing legal formalities.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2019