delhi

Updated: Sep 23, 2019 07:42 IST

Suspecting his wife of an extramarital affair, a man stabbed her to death on Saturday night and hacked her body into several pieces to dispose of them in the septic tank and a drain near his house in outer Delhi’s Prem Nagar, the police said.

When the murdered woman’s family arrived at the murder spot on Sunday morning on receiving a “confession” from her husband, he surrendered at the local police station and led them to the severed body parts.

While SD Mishra, deputy commissioner of police (Rohini), quoted the suspect as saying that he killed his wife on suspicion of an extramarital affair, the woman’s family alleged that he would harass her for dowry and for giving birth to three daughters and no son.

The police said they had not received any complaint from the woman or her family in the past.

DCP Mishra identified the suspect as 33-year-old Ashu and his murdered wife as 30-year-old Seema. While Ashu repaired computers for a living, Seema was a homemaker. The couple owned a house in Prem Nagar, but had been renting a house in the same neighbourhood.

“The couple would quarrel frequently. On Saturday night, he took her to their own house where they quarrelled once again. Ashu then used a knife to stab her in the neck before severing her body into multiple pieces around 10pm on Saturday,” DCP Mishra said.

Another investigator said that Ashu had separated the torso, the limbs and the head—chopping them into at least six pieces. “He dumped the limbs and the head into a septic tank at his house before placing a bed at that spot. He then stuffed the torso in a bag, loaded it on a motorcycle and rode for over two kilometres to dump it in a drain,” the investigator said.

Ashu allegedly called Seema’s mother on Saturday night itself.

“Ashu claimed that when he would complain about Seema to her family, they would tell him to sort the matter between themselves. He claimed that he believed that Seema’s family wouldn’t bother even if he killed her,” the investigator said.

When Seema’s family received the call from him, they said they didn’t take him seriously. Seema’s brother, Santosh Pal said,“When we tried calling him back moments later, we found his phone to be switched off. We visited Seema’s house on Sunday morning to find blood around and a bloodstained stone nearby.”

“He had been planning to repair his house and had been harassing my sister to ask our mother for money,” Pal said.

Pal raised an alarm even as Ashu surrendered at the local police station. “Ashutold us that he decided to surrender when he realised that Seema’s family wouldn’t keep quiet about the murder,” the investigator said.

Over the next eight hours, the police worked to bring out the body parts from the septic tank and recover the torso from the drain, DCP Mishra said.