Suspicious husband cuts wife’s hands off

RUSSIA: A woman is recovering in hospital after her jealous husband took her to a forest and chopped off her hands with an axe.

Doctors managed to recover Margarita Gracheva’s severed left hand and sew it back into place.

Her husband, Dmitri Grachev, from Serpukhov near Moscow, had accused her of cheating on him and had forced her to undergo a lie detector test.

Unsatisfied with the results, Grachev, 26, lost his temper and took the mother of two to the forest, where he chopped into her hands, trying to force her to confess. He then severed both hands.

Grachev took his wife to a hospital and left her there before turning himself in to police and admitting the crime, saying that it was ‘‘a stupidity, to put it mildly’’. He faces up to 15 years in jail.

Speaking from her hospital bed, Margarita Gracheva, 25, told a journalist that her husband became angry after she told him she wanted to split up. He had also seen an exchange of text messages between her and a male colleague.

Gracheva’s mother, Inna Sheykina, told reporters that the couple had planned to separate. ‘‘They had applied for a divorce. He started to get paranoid because of jealousy. He thought she was cheating on him. He ... beat her and threatened her with a knife.’’

The victim’s brother, Ilya Sheykin, said the lie detector test had been inconclusive and Grachev remained suspicious.

‘‘He was constantly threatening her, since September,’’ he said, ‘‘saying he would take her to the forest, persecuting her, saying he’d bury her.’’

Sheykina added: ‘‘It seems he had already prepared the axe. He sent a text message to his relatives saying, ‘I can’t live any longer when I’m being cheated on’. It was all paranoia.’’ –