Man hacks wife to death and commits suicide

Man hacks wife to death and commits suicide

Mangalore Today News Network

Karkala, Jun 21, 2012 : A man hacked his wife to death and then hanged himself in his house at Doopadakatte on June 20, Wednesday.

The deceased are Jagannath Poojary (40) and his wife Malini Shetty (35). When Malini married Jagannath, she was a divorcee with two children Nischith (11) and Nithesh (14).

Reportedly, Jagannath murdered his wife after the children went to school in the morning. Since the couple lived in an isolated house, nobody heard anything.

A neighbor who arrived at Jagannath’s house at around 11:30 a.m. to pick his rooster, which he had tied in front of their house, peeped into the house when nobody responded to his calls. He saw Malini lying in a pool of blood and Jagannath hanging from the ceiling in the bedroom.

Things were strewn all over the house. Nobody knows the exact reason for the quarrel as the couple lived alone.

Malini, daughter of Umavathi and late Jagadish of Yeyyadi, married her first husband Kumar Gowda of Hassan 15 years back, but divorced him and returned to her parents’ house. She then found work in a beauty parlor in Kapikad, Mangalore, after which she got into a relationship with Jagannath of Puttur. The couple fell in love and got married three years back in Dharmasthala. The family then settled down in a rented house in Karkala, where Jagannath got a job fitting tiles.

A fortnight back, the family visited Malini’s parents’ house for her father’s death anniversary. On the night of June 18, the couple got into a fierce quarrel in Malini’s parents’ house and Jagannath threatened to kill her with a broken beer bottle. Although other members of the family broke the fight, they could not imagine what exactly the two were fighting about.

On June 19, Jagannath returned to Karkala with the children in the morning, and Malini returned in the afternoon. Malini never gave any signs that her life was in danger.

On June 20, Jagannath went out for work, but returned shortly just to hack his wife to death. Later, he committed suicide.

The Karkala police have registered a case, and a police team comprising DySP Jayanth Shetty, Circle Inspector Valentine D’Souza, Inspector Azmath Ali, and others conducted preliminary investigations.