Gauhati,August 30 : A woman hacked her husband to death and drank his blood before setting the body on fire after an argument during lunch at their Guwahati home this afternoon.
Though it is unclear what triggered the row, it enraged 37-year-old Minoti Rabha enough for her to attack her husband, Dev Charan Bongjong, 40, with a machete.
Bongjong, an employee of Army Base Hospital at Basistha, suffered multiple cuts and died on the spot.
“When the couple’s son and daughter saw their mother attacking their father, they ran out of the house and raised an alarm, alerting neighbours, who informed Basistha police station,” a police source said.
Some of their neighbours, who rushed to the rented house in Lotakata, were horrified to find the woman drinking her husband’s blood.
They could hardly help, as Minoti chased them with the blood-stained machete.
“After drinking blood, she put some clothes on the body and set it on fire,” the source said.
“She also tried to attack policemen who reached the spot from Basistha police station. The police had to struggle for some time before they overpowered her.”
The high drama continued for about an hour, after which the police arrested the woman and began questioning her after conducting a medical examination.
They also recovered the murder weapon (the machete).
“She looked mentally imbalanced and was not coherent enough to say why she had killed her husband,” a source said.
“We have registered a case under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and sent the body to the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital for autopsy,” he added.
The police, however, are still clueless about the motive of the murder.
Minoti’s neighbours have told the police that she had not showed any signs of mental illness and had no idea why she had behaved in such an abnormal manner today.
They also failed to shed light on any possibility of marital discord.
The couple’s children, seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son told the police that their mother attacked their father after an argument but they could not say over what they were bickering.