27-year-old Sumayya had one stab injury below her chest and had sustained blood loss. She succumbed to her injuries at a nearby hospital despite being rushed there.
According to The News Minute, soon after stabbing his wife, Sajeer tried to flee but was eventually nabbed at a traffic signal while he was trying to escape in an auto. He has been charged under Section 302 (murder), with the Palarivattom police having produced him in court on Thursday.
Sajeer had suspected Sumayya of having an affair with another man. The two were married for 10 years and have two children. Following the split, Sumayya started living with her parents and took up a new job as a warden in a hostel a week back.
Crimes against women in the country have been escalating. Statistics from 2016 and 2017 show that majority of the cases are categorised as crimes against women were reported under ‘Cruelty by husband or his relatives’ (32.6%), followed by ‘Assault on woman with intent to outrage her modesty’ (25%),‘Kidnapping and abduction of women’ (19%) and ‘Rape’ (11.5%).
In the recent past, there have been several instances of crimes against women that have initiated a dialogue about women safety in the country. In 2016, S Swathi, a 24-year-old Infosys employee, was murdered at the Nungambakkam railway station in Chennai, Tamil Nadu while on her way to her office. Swathi was murdered in front of several people, with passengers remaining mute spectators. The assailant, suspected to be Ramkumar, escaped, and Swathi’s body lay unattended before the police arrived.
Another case that showcased India’s disturbing reality was when in November last year, a young woman in Chennai was set on fire allegedly by a man who had been stalking her. The incident took place in Adambakkam area.
In March, again in one of the busiest roads in Chennai, Ashwini, a 19-year-old college student was killed by a stalker who slit her throat in broad daylight hardly a few meters away from her college.
And most recently, a few days ago in Kerala’s Thrissur district, a woman named Jeethu was set ablaze by her husband Viraj, while she and her father were getting out of a Kudumbashree office. Jeethu succumbed to her burn injuries two days after the incident. Following this, the police nabbed Viraj from a relative’s house in Mumbai.
