Hyderabad: Woman murders husband but mutton soup exposes her sinister plot

HYDERABAD: In a sinister plot straight out of a crime thriller, a woman murdered her husband and nearly succeeded in passing off her paramour as her spouse but was foiled by a bowl of mutton soup.

Telangana police on Sunday arrested M Swati, a 27-year-old nurse at a private hospital, in Nagarkurnool town after she confessed to murdering her husband Sudhakar Reddy with the help of Rajesh, her paramour.

Swati and Sudhakar were married three years and have a child. But she became close to Rajesh, a physiotherapist, with whom she hatched the murder plan.

The couple knocked Sudhakar unconscious with anaesthesia early on November 27, and then killed him by bludgeoning his head. They later dumped and burned Sudhakar’s body in a forest.

This was not all. To cover up Sudhakar’s disappearance, Rajesh’s face was disfigured with acid and brought to the hospital for a plastic surgery. Swati told her husband’s family that some unknown people had attacked him, passing off Rajesh as Sudhakar.

However, relatives became suspicious when ‘Sudhakar’ refused to have the mutton soup being served to patients. They got even more suspicious when he told hospital staff that he is a vegetarian; the real Sudhakar was a non-vegetarian.

According to a police officer involved in the investigations, the Reddy family noticed the difference in behaviour. When they started asking him questions about relatives, Rajesh, who they thought was Sudhakar, stopped speaking and communicated in signs.

Suspecting something amiss, the family alerted police. Upon being grilled, Swati confessed and told police she got the idea for the identity swap from the 2014 Telugu movie ‘Yevadu’, in which a plastic surgeon gives an injured youth the face of her deceased son.

Police said Rajesh will be taken into custody after being discharged from the hospital.