Nanjangud: An incident of a woman hacking her husband to death with an axe for concealing his first marriage and later committing suicide has been reported from Basavattige village in the taluk yesterday.

While the husband has been identified as Raghavendra alias Raghava (35), a resident of Nellore in Chamarajanagar, his wife has been identified as Shwetha (27), also from the same place. The couple were living at   Basavattige village.

Raghava, who was working as a stone crusher at Nellore, met Shwetha, who was working as a labourer. Their friendship turned into love and they got married about two years ago after Raghava told her that he was not married. After marriage, Raghava and Shwetha began to live at Badanawalu village.

Raghava, who began to drive a tractor to earn a living, took a house on rent at Basavattige village about four months ago and the couple began to live there.

But, Raghava had married one Kavitha about 12 years ago in Ramasamudra and has two children who are living in Ramasamudra, it is learnt.

Raghava had left his first wife and children about four years ago, but used to meet them quite often and used to give them money for their expenses.

When Shwetha came to know about Raghava’s first wife and children and him meeting them often, she began to quarrel with Raghava. Shwetha also came to know that Raghava had met his first wife and kids on Ayudha Puja day and had bought his children new dresses and had also given Kavitha money for festival expenses.

Last night, quarrel took place between the couple over Raghava meeting his first wife and children during which Raghava denied meeting them, resulting in the couple assaulting each other physically.

During the fight, Shwetha reportedly picked up an axe lying nearby and struck on Raghava’s head resulting in him screaming and collapsing on the floor. But Shwetha allegedly struck him many times with the axe killing him on the spot. Later, Shwetha who left the axe next to the mutilated body of her husband, committed suicide by hanging self with her veil, according to the Police.

Badanavalu Police, who rushed to the spot on receiving information, shifted the bodies to Nanjangud General Hospital for post-mortem. SP Ravi D. Channannavar, Additional SP Rudramuni, ASP Mohammed Sujeetha and Circle Inspector Gopalakrishna visited the spot. Kavalande SI Shivamahadevaiah, who has registered a case in this regard, is investigating.