Man hacks couple in front of kids, poisons himself minutes later

THE SUSPECT WAS CONSCIOUS WHEN POLICE REACHED THE SPOT, BUT HE FELL UNCONSCIOUSNESS MINUTES LATER

NEW DELHI: A 50-year-old man allegedly stabbed a couple to death in front of their two children and then killed himself by consuming poison in outer Delhi’s Narela on Wednesday morning, police said. While the suspect was conscious when police officers reached the crime spot, he fell unconsciousness minutes later, and died in a hospital later that day.

Police identified the couple as Mohammad Hashim (28), who was a motor mechanic and Minnat Khatoon (25), a homemaker. The alleged murderer Mohammad Mushtaq, an e-rickshaw driver, stabbed the two multiple times with a meat cleaver, killing them on the spot, said a senior police officer associated with the investigations.

According to the police, the two families often quarrelled over minor domestic matters such as disposing waste water and garbage outside their houses. The police also said that the murdered man and the alleged killer had a heated argument on Saturday, after their vehicles collided.

The senior officer the alleged murdered was alive when police reached the scene after a neighbour informed them of the attack.

A case of murder was registered at Narela police station based on the neighbour’s statement.

“We caught him from the terrace of his house and were interrogating him when we saw him frothing from his mouth. While telling us about the petty disputes he had with the couple, he fell unconscious. We rushed him to Baba Saheb Ambedkar hospital where he died during treatment,” said the officer. Deputy commissioner of police (outer north) Gaurav Sharma said that around 2.40 am, Narela police were informed that a person with blood on his clothes had escaped the couple’s house after killing a woman. A police team reached the spot and met the caller, a neighbour, who told them he had seen the 50-year-old rickshaw puller attacking the couple at their house.

The neighbour told the police that he saw, through his window, the man allegedly attacking the woman with a weapon while she slept. He said the woman was trying to fight him away and screaming for help. When her husband came to her rescue, the man allegedly stabbed him as well.

The couple’s two children, aged two and four years, were in the same room where their parents were stabbed, the officer said, quoting the neighbour’s statement.

Police said that after stabbing the couple, the man went to his house changed his bloodstained clothes, cleaned blood from the chopper while his wife and three children were sleeping. He later went to the terrace, where he consumed some poisonous substance.

“The neighbour told us that the killer was hiding on the terrace of his house. We went there and caught him. However, by then he already had consumed the poisonous substance,” the officer said, adding that the blood splattered on the walls suggested that the couple had fought with the killer in a bid to save their lives.

Sharma said they recovered the meat cleaver. The couple hail from Bihar and had shifted to Delhi around two years ago.

The alleged killer had lived in the neighbourhood for more than 17 years.