A 32-year-old man was arrested on Friday for allegedly killing his 26-year-old wife, whom he accused of infidelity, by setting her ablaze and attempting to set their daughter afire in the early hours of Wednesday in Hyderabad’s Tilak Nagar.
K Maruti Prasad, a local police officer, said the man, K Venkatesh, a daily wager, tried to push the six-year-old daughter into the fire, but she managed to escape with minor injuries.
Prasad said Venkatesh’s wife was a hotel worker. “The man [Venkatesh] went absconding soon after the incident and was arrested in the early hours of Friday. He will be produced before the court for judicial remand,” Prasad said.
Venkatesh has been booked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita’s Section 103(1) (murder) on his father-in-law Chityala Appaiah’s complaint. “The body was handed over to the family members on Thursday after the post-mortem,” Prasad said.
Prasad quoted Appaiah’s complaint and said the couple had moved from their native Huzur Nagar in Nalgonda district to Hyderabad five years ago and stayed with their eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter.
“According to the family members, Venkatesh had been harassing his wife, suspecting her fidelity, for the last couple of years. At around 12.30am on Wednesday, a passerby noticed flames coming from Venkatesh’s home and alerted others,” Prasad said.
The people who rushed in found the 26-year-old engulfed in flames, while her children were crying. “She was rushed to Gandhi Hospital, where she died in the early hours of Wednesday,” he said.
Prasad cited a preliminary investigation and said Venkatesh doused his wife with petrol and set her ablaze. “The daughter, who was sleeping next to her mother, started crying, and Venkatesh pushed her towards her mother before fleeing the spot. The girl ran out of the room crying, but she did not suffer any major injuries.”
