Days after a 37-year-old woman died alleging that her husband had injected her with mercury, the Bengaluru Rural police Sunday arrested her husband on the charges of killing her.
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The Bengaluru Rural police said they arrested Basavaraju M, a resident of Attibele on Sarjapur Road, under Section 80, which deals with dowry death, of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for allegedly killing his wife, Vidya A.
Basavaraju, a businessman, has been sent to judicial custody, they added.
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“We are waiting for the reports from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), and we will take him in police custody for further probe. He has claimed that he did not inject mercury to kill his wife, but we are probing the case,” a police officer said.
Vidya, who was being treated at Victoria Hospital, gave a video statement to the police a day before she died of multiple organ failure on November 26.
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The mother of a four-year-old boy approached the Attibele police on November 23, and filed a complaint, saying her husband injected her with mercury on February 27, leading to a deterioration in her health.
According to the FIR, Vidya said she was surprised by Basavaraju’s unusual display of affection but lost consciousness shortly afterwards. Basavaraju always scolded and ignored her, Vidya said in the FIR.
When she woke up in the evening on that day, she said she experienced pain in her right thigh, and found a mark from a needle. She visited Attibele Government Hospital on March 7 as she could not bear the pain, and the doctors advised her to go to Oxford Hospital for further treatment.
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After undergoing several tests at Oxford Hospital, doctors confirmed that mercury was present in her body. She spent one-and-a-half months there as an inpatient before being transferred to Victoria Hospital.
In the FIR, as well as in her statement to the police, last Sunday, Vidya said the doctors told her that the mercury had spread throughout her body. “It has weakened my organs and damaged my kidneys. I was made to go on regular dialysis as my health was deteriorating every day,” she stated to the police.
Initially, the police filed the case under sections 85 (cruelty by a husband or his relatives towards a woman) and 109 (1) (attempt to murder) of the BNS.