Hyderabad: A 23-year-old Dalit house surgeon at the Government Medical College in Siddipet district of Telangana allegedly died by suicide after she was “cheated” by a senior resident doctor after he promised to marry her, police said on Monday.

Upset over his refusal to marry due to caste differences, she self-injected a herbicide in the college hostel on January 3 and fell unconscious.

Her roommates admitted her to a hospital in Siddipet and later to a state-run hospital in Hyderabad, where she died in the early hours of January 4 while undergoing treatment, officials said.

Based on a complaint made by the victim’s sister, the police registered a case under relevant sections of the BNS and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and arrested the accused, they said.

The deceased, who belongs to a poor family from Jogulamba-Gadwal district, studied in a social welfare school and later joined MBBS in the Government Medical College in Siddipet in 2020.

She is known to have excelled in academics and sports and games, police said. Her parents work as labourers, while her elder sister is a software engineer.

The deceased was doing her internship at the Government Medical College in Siddipet where she came in contact with the accused, who is a senior resident doctor, in July last year, police said.

The accused, who belongs to the backward classes, promised to marry her but later refused, citing caste differences, which led her to take the extreme step, police said.