The Bengaluru police on Thursday arrested a 35-year-old man who attempted to pass off the alleged murder of his wife at their residence in the city as a death due to electrocution during a bathing accident on October 15.
The accused has been identified as Prashanth Kammar, a daily wage earner from Ballari, who was living with his wife Reshma H, 32, in the Hebbagodi region of south east Bengaluru after their marriage nine months ago, the police said.
Reshma, a widow and a mother of a teenage girl who had been working in Mumbai, met Prashant Kammar on Instagram and developed a relationship leading to their marriage. The couple started living together in Bengaluru with Reshma’s daughter from her first marriage, the police said.
According to the police, Reshma was found in an unconscious state in the bathroom, which was locked from the outside, by her teenage daughter after she returned from school in the evening. The girl informed her aunt in Bengaluru, Renuka Anandkumar, who reached the spot and shifted Reshma to a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, Renuka also telephoned Prashanth Kammar to inform him about the incident.
Kammar, who claimed to be travelling to his house in Ballari, also came to the hospital where Reshma was declared dead on arrival, the police said. The husband initially claimed that Reshma may have died due to an electric shock since she was preparing for a bath when he left the house on the evening of October 15, the police said.
The police said that Renuka, who had suspicions regarding the role of Kammar in her younger sister’s death, filed a police complaint at the Hebbagodi police station on October 16.
“He had told Renuka that his wife had gone to take a bath and had placed an electric heater rod in a bucket of water, and that she might have led to her death. But later, when Renuka questioned her niece, she said their house was lying open with the bathroom latched from the outside. The girl also told her that her father had recently been quarreling with her mother, suspecting that she was speaking to another man the previous day,” said a police officer.
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During the investigation, the police pursued multiple angles, gathered information from the complainant and witnesses, and detained the accused near a hospital on Hosur Main Road on October 16. During interrogation, the accused was taken to the crime scene along with the Scene of Crime Officers team, the police said.
“Upon questioning, the accused confessed that he had suspected his wife of having an illicit relationship and, in a fit of rage, assaulted her and strangled her to death. To conceal the murder, he left the body in the bathroom and switched on the water heater to make it appear as though she had died of an electric shock,” the police said.
Prashanth Kammar was produced in court on October 17 following his arrest and remanded in judicial custody.