Mentally ill woman bludgeons husband to death, arrested

TNN | Apr 8, 2020, 04:00 IST

Rajkot: A woman with learning difficulties allegedly bludgeoned her husband to death while the latter was asleep on a cot in Hamusar village of Mithapur taluka in Devbhoomi Dwarka on early Tuesday morning. The accused woman was arrested late on Tuesday afternoon.
Police said the accused, identified as Rupi Hathal (32), had hit her husband, Tapubha Hathal (38) with a pestle.
“Rupi had been suffering from mental disorder for the past seven years, for which she had also been undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Jamnagar. She appears to have committed the crime in a frenzy caused by her illness,” said S D Dangar, inspector with Mithapur police station.
When Tapubha was being attacked, his 12-year-old daughter Anjali woke up. She woke up Tapubha’s nephew Rambha Hathal, who called up 108 emergency ambulance. However, by the time the ambulance arrived, Tapubha had already succumbed to his injuries.
Rupi was booked and arrested on the complaint of Rambha. The preliminary investigation of the police suggests that there was apparently no motive to the crime. “Rupi’s family members said that she would often suffer fits and go into a frenzy, attacking whoever was near to her. During interrogation, she could not give any satisfactory answer, we suspect that she has killed her husband out of her mental instabilty,” said an official from Mithapur police station.