india

Updated: Jun 26, 2019 07:47 IST

A 36-year-old construction worker from Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district was arrested on Tuesday for murdering his wife because she apparently spent hours chatting with male friends on Facebook in defiance of his warnings, police said.

Gomathinayagam, who lives in Sankarankoil town about 200 km from Chennai and has three children, confessed to having murdered his wife Muthumari, 33, six days ago on repeated questioning by the police. He has been remanded in 15 days’ custody by Sankarankoil judicial magistrate, Vijayalakshmi.

A police officer from Sankarankoil said Gomathinayagam had lodged a complaint last Thursday stating that his wife was found dead in their house with deep cuts on her body. “During questioning, he said Muthumari was active on Facebook and was always engaged in chatting with male friends, and any one of the friends could have committed the murder for gain,” the officer told reporters. The police, however, suspected something amiss in his version of events because neither cash nor jewellery had been stolen from his house.

On Monday, a forensic team was sent to the house and a sniffer dog was also pressed into service, the officer quoted above said. “The dog ran for about 100 metres but came back to the house. The fingerprints collected at the place of crime also matched with those of Gomathinayagam,” he said.