Noida: Man stabs wife to death in front of 3-year-old son

NOIDA: A 25-year-old woman was stabbed at least six times in the stomach by her husband in front of their three-year-old son and scores of onlookers at a marketplace in Harola on Saturday and lay there bleeding and crying for help for around 20 minutes before police took her to hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival.
Ruby Khatoon had moved to her mother’s place with her son after a quarrel with her husband Abbas around 10 days ago. Her family said she could have been saved had some of the onlookers taken her to the hospital instead of waiting for the police team to arrive.

Abbas, who is untraceable, was Ruby’s second husband. The woman, who hailed from Aurangabad district in Bihar, had got married to one Rafiq, a resident of Gopalganj, around eight years ago.

The couple had two children together, but both of them died within days of birth. Financial constraints had then forced Ruby to work in a garments factory in Noida Sector 5, where she met Abbas for the first time. After a few weeks, the woman left Rafiq and fled with Abbas.

Rafiq told TOI Ruby had got married to Abbas later and returned to confront her family after one and a half years of her second marriage. The couple had a three-year-old child named Shahid.

Sources said that around 1.30pm on Saturday, Ruby was walking to her elder sister’s tea stall in Harola along with her mother and Shahid when Abbas tugged at her dupatta on the road between Sectors 5 and 6.

Abbas allegedly tried to snatch away Shahid, telling Ruby that he wanted to take him along to Mumbai. When Ruby refused to let go of her son, Abbas stabbed her at least six times in the stomach and back.

The three-year-old boy fell off Ruby’s lap during the attack. His grandmother Jamila picked him up and ran away fearing Abbas would kill him too.

The attack took place in a market crowded with shoppers but few dared to intervene. A police officer who reached the spot after getting a call said Ruby was crying for help. “Someone from the crowd had informed police, but Abbas had already fled by the time a team reached there and took her to hospital. She was crying in pain, asking us to save her. But she died before we could reach the district hospital,” the officer said.

Jamila has told police that Abbas suspected Ruby had resumed her ties with her former husband Rafiq and had been meeting him of late. “His drinking habits turned the relationship all the more sour. She had been staying with her mother and brother in Harola for the past 10 days,” she said.

Rafiq was present at the police station. “I don’t know what to say. There was a huge crowd at the spot but none made any attempt to save her. She could have survived had the police reached on time,” he said.

Manish Saxena, the SHO of the local police station, said an FIR had been lodged against Abbas for murder.

In June, an alleged stalker had stabbed a woman to death in a shopping complex in Greater Noida after she rejected his marriage proposal. The attacker, who had injured himself after killing the woman, died a few days later at Sajdarjung Hospital in New Delhi.