Woman kills drunk husband, hides body in septic tank for 5 days

Fed up with his frequent drinking habit, a 34-year-old woman allegedly strangled her inebriated husband and dumped his body in the septic tank of their house in southwest Delhi’s Krishna Vihar near Najafgarh after hiding it inside a bed box for more than 12 hours last week.

Fed up with his frequent drinking habit, a 34-year-old woman allegedly strangled her inebriated husband and dumped his body in the septic tank of their house in southwest Delhi’s Krishna Vihar near Najafgarh after hiding it inside a bed box for more than 12 hours last week.

Police said the husband used to abuse her both physically and verbally often after drinking.

In order to avoid the stench from spreading, the woman hired some labourers and got the lid of the septic tank cemented. After the crime, the woman moved to her parents’ house with her children.

The woman left her husband’s body to decay inside the septic tank for five days after which she was too traumatised to keep the secret and ended up in confiding with her sister-in-law.

The sister-in-law initially did not believe her. But they later informed the police who recovered the man’s body from the septic tank of the house on Thursday morning.

The woman, identified as Seema, was arrested on charges on Thursday evening for murdering her husband and destroying evidence from the crime scene.

The deceased, Om Bhardwaj, worked as an auto-rickshaw driver in the national capital.

The couple lived with a 10-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter at their two-storey house in Krishna Vihar Colony.

RA Sanjeev, deputy commissioner of police (southwest), said Seema’s family members informed the police that she had killed her husband on the night of August 15.

“We registered a case and arrested the woman,” said Sanjeev. The police took hours to recover the body from the septic tank, which was about 20 feet deep.

A senior investigating officer said Seema told police that on the fateful night, Bhardwaj returned home heavily drunk. When Seema objected, an argument broke out.

“After the argument, Bhardwaj went to sleep on the ground floor room while their children were sleeping on the first floor. Around 10.30pm, Seema strangled her husband while he was asleep and put his body inside the bed box,” said the officer.

On August 16, Seema sent her children to school without telling them anything. Later, she pulled out her husband’s body from the bed box, dragged it to the septic tank of the house and dumped it.

Later she allegedly summoned a few labourers and cemented the lid of the tank, said the officer.