Cairo: An Egyptian man, locked in a legal battle against his wife, committed suicide inside a provincial court building after the hearings of his lawsuit against the woman had been postponed, legal sources said Tuesday.
In his suit, the 47-year-old man had accused his wife of infidelity and denied his fatherhood of children from their troubled marriage, the sources said. The wife had already filed an alimony case against him.
When the chief judge of the court in the Nile Delta province of Dakahlia announced adjourning the hearings of the man’s suit, he drank an insecticide that was in his possession and fell on the ground unconscious, witnesses told private newspaper Al Masri Al Youm.
He died on his way to hospital, they added.
Local prosecutors ordered an autopsy on his body to determine the exact cause of his death before permitting his burial.
Family courts in Egypt handle around 1.5 million cases annually, according to independent figures.
