Cairo: An Egyptian woman has been arrested over suspicion of torturing her husband to death after he had planned to remarry, local media reported.
The family of the 63-year-old victim, a pensioner, said he had disappeared from his house in the Nile Delta of Al Dakahlia, two days before his planned remarriage that was scheduled for last Thursday.
“My brother had a miserable marriage. His wife used to assault him,” the sister of the dead man said, according to Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm.
”She deserted him, prompting him to move to live in a separate apartment. He decided to remarry after he became unable to serve himself,” she added.
After searching for him, the man’s family found him lying naked in the air shaft of his house in a critical health condition. He was hospitalised.
“After he restored consciousness, he told us that his wife and her brother had dragged him and stripped him of his clothes before beating him up and throwing him inside the air shaft,” the sister claimed. He later died in hospital.
A hospital report said the man had suffered brain haemorrhage, blood clots in the scalp, as a result of colliding with a solid object, and immobility in his lower limbs.
The 55-year-old wife, a school administrative employee, and her brother, a dealer of auto spare parts, denied accusations in investigations.
Local prosecutors ordered both remanded on charges of premeditated murder and a post-mortem examination of the body to determine the cause of death.
Domestic violence and family crimes have increased in recent years in Egypt, raising concerns in the conservative country.
Last week, a father, believed to be mentally unstable, had killed his three little children, by placing them in front of a speeding train in the province of Minya, south of the Egyptian capital.
Last year, a criminal court sentenced a medical doctor to death by hanging after he was convicted of killing his wife and three children in the Nile Delta province of Kafr Al Shaikh.
