Mumbai: Man poisons wife of 5 yrs as she couldn't give him a baby

A 32-year-old from Kherwadi, Bandra (E), and his sister were arrested yesterday for killing his wife of five years by giving her poison disguised as medicine because she could not give him a baby.

The plan was hatched by the sister-in-law who was also eyeing a property owned by the deceased. On Monday evening, Sairabanu Abdul Salam Sayeed (30) was declared brought dead at the Nagari Suvidha Kendra hospital in Kherwadi by her husband Abdul Salaam Sayeed (32).

Representational pic

Her relatives claimed she had been killed by her in-laws and the police were called in. Seeing that there were no injury marks, the cops registered an accidental death report and sent the body for a post-mortem. They also recovered an empty strip of tablets from a nullah near the house.

‘Poison'
The initial findings of the post-mortem revealed on Tuesday that some poisonous substance had been found in Sairabanu's body and the police began to get suspicious.

Their suspicions were heightened when, while taking the statements of the relatives, the woman's brother, Sharif Shaikh (32) said he had seen Sayeed throw a plastic medicine bottle away at the hospital.

Senior Inspector Sujata Patil of Kherwadi police station said, "After the deceased's final rites were done, we asked her husband to come to police station to record his statement and we started having some doubts when he said his wife was having gynaecological problem since 5 years of marriage, and they were having no kids."

Sinister plot
Sayeed was called in for questioning again on Wednesday and when he was shown the empty strip of tablets and confronted with other evidence, he initially denied everything and said the tablets were for headaches he was having.

On sutained interrogation, however, he broke down and confessed that he had given Sairabanu parad tablets (made of mercury mixed with chalk) which are commonly used to ward off insects in grain.

He said his wife had been suffering from a toothache and gastric problems since a fortnight and he had given her the tablets in the strip of medicines on Monday claiming they were pills for those ailments. He then took her to the hospital only when her condition got very serious.

Sayeed also said that the poisonous tablets were sent to him by his sister Amina, a resident of Pathanwadi in Goregaon and that the plan of killing Sairabanu was hatched by Amina. He said they had killed Sairabanu because she could not give him a baby and because Amina wanted to take over a house Sairabanu had in her name.

"Sayeed and Amina were arrested and charged under Sections 120B (Criminal Conspiracy), 302 (Murder), 328 (Causing hurt by means of poison) and 34 (Common intention) of the IPC. They were produced in court and remanded in police custody," said Senior Inspector Patil.