Man who went missing after killing wife arrested from Delhi

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: A software engineer, who scooted after murdering his six-weekpregnant wife in the city, has been nabbed by the Sadduguntepalya police, a senior police official said on Sunday.

News Trail had reported about a woman found murdered inside an apartment in Subhash Nagar of Tavarekere on January 17. Soon after the incident, a preliminary investigation by the police revealed that the woman, Naaz Khanum, 22, had married Naseer Hussain, 30, a techie employed in the city. The couple had reportedly married six months ago and had recently shifted to the apartment in Tavarekere.

Sources close to the family of the deceased said that Naseer Hussain was an orphan and a native of West Bengal. Naaz and Hussain fell in love and got married. Other than this, they denied having any information about Hussian. A month after shifting to the apartment, the couple got to know that Naaz was pregnant.

However, suspecting his wife's fidelity, Hussain allegedly refused to acknowledge the unborn child as his, which resulted in the couple often getting into heated arguments. After one such altercation on January 16, Hussain smothered Naaz to death and fled from the apartment.

The next day, he sent a WhatsApp message to Naaz's brother, Ayub, informing him to collect her body from the house. When Ayub called him back, he found that Hussain had switched off his only contact number. Meanwhile the city police, who had taken the matter seriously, formed teams to nab the accused. An officer from Sadduguntepalya Police Station said that Hussain had booked a flight ticket to Delhi way before he murdered his wife.

"The day after he smothered the woman to death, the accused hired a cab to reach the Bengaluru airport and paid Rs 4,000 to the cab driver through a UPI app and obtained Rs 3,500 in cash from him," the officer said. Police said that the accused had planned to flee to his hometown in West Bengal.

Hussain texted Ayub informing him that he had killed Naaz suspecting her fidelity, and then switched off his mobile phone before his flight to Delhi took off from the city. A team of policemen from Bengaluru verified the flight booking details followed his trail to Delhi, arrested him and brought him to the city. Further investigation is underway