Hardoi man beheads sleeping wife over affair suspicion, surrenders

A man in Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi district attacked his sleeping wife with a knife and severed her head from her torso, police said, in a killing he later admitted to at a police station.

The accused, Parvez, had been married to 28-year-old Nagma for around 12 years. After a division of family property, he sold his ancestral home and had been living as a tenant with his wife in Hardoi's Islamnagar Tiliya area for about a month and a half.

According to the police investigation, Parvez suspected his wife of having an extramarital affair and of speaking to another man on the phone. The couple argued over the matter frequently. On the night of September 9, while Nagma was asleep, he attacked her with a sharp knife.

Parvez later went to the police station and confessed to the murder. Officers reached the spot after being informed, took the blood-soaked body into custody and sent it for a post-mortem examination. He has been arrested and is being interrogated, while police are working to recover the weapon used in the attack.

Relatives of the victim have levelled additional allegations. Nagma's sister, Sabbo, said the woman had been tortured and beaten by her husband over the past week, and that he had threatened to slit her throat. She claimed his sisters and mother were complicit, and that a sister and brother-in-law were sleeping in the adjoining room at the time. A blood-stained undershirt was found hanging at the spot, she said.

The victim's mother, Zahida, alleged that Parvez harassed her daughter constantly and that threats to kill her and slit her throat had been made over the preceding three or four days. She also alleged that the mother-in-law and three sisters-in-law harassed Nagma.