Suspicious man gifted wife phone installed with spyware

(Names of the couple have been changed)

BENGALURU: Aided by 22 hidden cameras, a private detective armed with a telephotolens camera and a spyware planted in cellphone, a man suspicious of his wife tracked her every text and call round the clock. Angry that she was under constant surveillance for no fault of hers, the woman smashed her husband’s head with their son’s cricket bat recently.The Jayanagar couple is now headed for a divorce as the woman is unable to endure her 44-year-old husband’s suspicious nature. The man blames her for spoiling his good looks by attacking him.The marriage had a romantic beginning. On a rainy evening in July 2007, Sudarshan, a software engineer with a leading firm in Adugodi, went with his family to meet a prospective bride. But the techie was smitten by the girl’s younger sister.Her family turned down his offer as she was still in college. But Sudarshan pursued the girl for three years and they tied the knot in 2010 despite an 11-year age gap between them. The couple had a son two years after the marriage. A senior programmer now, Sudarshan’s suspicions about his homemaker wife Vinaya started a few years ago. He began surveillance by often taking leave from work to find her alleged paramour.“He installed tiny spy cameras in the house, including a few in the kitchen, and linked them to an app on his phone. He was constantly watching her,” said BS Saraswathi, senior counsellor at Vanitha Sahayavani (Women’s Helpline) at the Bengaluru police commissionerate who handled the couple’s case.Vinaya would step outside the house, unaware that a private detective — a relative of Sudarshan — was following her. When the private eye was busy, Sudarshan himself would tail his wife. Sudarshan bought an SLR camera with a powerful lens to catch the woman. “Time and again, the techie would confront his wife with his so-called evidence. He failed to relent despite her assurances that she wasn’t seeing anyone,” Saraswathi added.Earlier in the year, the engineer suddenly showered his wife with love and gifted her a cellphone on her birthday saying he was a changed man. “She trusted him and accepted the gift unaware that he had installed a spyware in it. Soon, he was watching all her phone activities — messages, calls and photos,” said the counsellor. All hell broke loose in April when the techie confronted his wife with her photographs with a youth he had secretly clicked unaware of the fact that it was her nephew. “Having been driven to the edge by her husband, the furious woman grabbed her son’s cricket bat and smashed him on his head with it,” Saraswathi added.With stitches in the head, the techie approached the jurisdictional police station with a complaint against his wife. Police referred the couple for counselling to reconcile differences. Weeks of counselling failed to bring the couple together.