Suspecting infidelity, man kills his wife

LUCKNOW : A seven-year-old girl spent a day locked up in a room of her house where her mother’s body was kept in a room on the floor below. Her father had killed her mother on Sunday on suspicion of adultery. The incident occurred in Luvkush Nagar under Ghazipur police station. On Monday, police recovered the body and arrested the accused, who had fled taking his daughter with him.

Police said Neeraj Gupta, 32, attacked his wife Hima with a belt on Sunday and she apparently died of the injuries. The couple’s daughter was present there at the time. As per preliminary probe, Neeraj caught Hima speaking to somebody on phone and killed her in a fit of rage. To prevent the body from decomposing, he put it in a room on the third floor of the house and switched on the air conditioner. He later locked his daughter in a room on the fourth floor of the house.

“During late afternoon Neeraj called Hima’s sister in Unnao and informed her that she had fallen sick. A few hours later, he told her that Hima had died,” said Deepak Kumar, CO, Ghazipur area. When the sister and other family members reached the house on Monday, they found it locked and informed the police on Dial 100.

The police team that reached the house recovered the body and sent it for post-mortem examination. Meanwhile, another police team was deployed to search for Neeraj whom they arrested near Kukrail embankment.

The officials found the girl in shock when they rescued her from her father. “The girl looks very scared and is finding it difficult to talk about the incident,” said a senior police official privy to investigation. Police decided to hand her over to her maternal relatives. An FIR of murder and other sections of IPC has been lodged against Neeraj on the basis of the complaint submitted by Hima’s family. A team was interrogating Neeraj by the time this report was submitted.