A Japanese man turned himself into authorities after trying to flush the ashes of his “hated” dead wife down a supermarket toilet, reports and police said on Sunday.

The 68-year-old man told police he dumped his wife’s ashes into the toilet bowl at a Tokyo supermarket immediately after she was cremated last month.

Police were alerted after the ashes, and bone fragments including a human chin, were discovered, but were at a loss to explain them until the man handed himself in, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

He had felt growing resentment towards his spouse over the years of their unhappy marriage, according to the daily. “I had hatred mounting against her,” the man, whose name was not disclosed, was quoted as saying. “Life was such a pain before she died.”

His wife had died at the age of 64, following illness. Prosecutors are now considering whether to lay charges of abandoning a human body, as ashes can only be scattered in approved locations, a Tokyo police spokesman told AFP.

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