Patna: A man in Bihar set his young wife on fire merely because she forgot to add salt to a mutton dish she had cooked at home.
The victim with severe burn injuries has been admitted to a local hospital for treatment even as police are conducting raids to arrest her absconding husband.
The heart-rending incident occurred at Alam Tota locality under Forbesganj police station in eastern Bihar’s Araria district on Thursday night but was reported in the local media only on Saturday.
Police said Nazarana Khatoon, 25, served the cooked mutton to her husband Mohammad Guddu Khan when he returned home after a day’s work on Thursday night but when he ate, he found the dish tasteless as it had no salt, leaving him extremely infuriated.
In a fit of anger, the man grabbed the kerosene lamp kept at home, poured the entire inflammable on his wife and then lit the match stick before locking her in one of the rooms as she screamed for help.
Hearing her scream, someone in the locality informed the local police who reached the spot after about three hours due to incomplete address details and finally rescued the victim who was battling for life in her solitary confinement. Immediately, she was moved to a local hospital for treatment. Doctors say the victim has suffered more than 40 per cent burn injuries and her condition is still critical.
“She has survived just because of the police… but for our timely action, she would have died of burn injuries,” the local district superintendent of police Shivdeep Waman Lande told the Gulf News on Saturday. He said it took the police three hours to trace the victim as they had received an incomplete address.
Lande said the accused man was absconding after the incident but the police had launched a massive manhunt to arrest him. “He will be caught very soon,” said Lande adding the woman was badly beaten up and tortured before being set on fire.
