Man kills wife over social media addiction

Gurugram: Fed up with wife’s addiction to Facebook and WhatsApp, her husband Hariom strangulated Laxmi while she was asleep on Thursday, he claimed. Hariom, who was arrested on Friday told the police that his wife would spend hours chatting with people on social networking sites.

Hariom said that he was distressed over her behaviour as his 32-year-old wife would ignore him and their kids. “We got married in 2006 and had two children and it was all fine. I got her a smartphone and in the past two years and she started ignoring me and the children. She would not cook meals or do any household chore; she would not take the kids to school or help them do homework. She spent days and nights on Facebook and WhatsApp,” he claimed.

Laxmi’s father, Balwant Singh, found her body on Friday morning when he visited her, with Hariom sitting next to her on the bed. Singh then got Hariom arrested by informing the police, TOI reported.

The 35-year-old Hariom who used to run a computer repair shop was produced before a city court and was sent to police remand on Friday. During the interrogation, Hariom informed police that he ignored her behaviour thinking she would get bored with all this but things only intensified.

“We were fighting every day and the children were also under stress,” he added. He said Laxmi’s addiction to the phone made him send their small kids – eight-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son – to a boarding school in Kurukshetra. However, this made Laxmi even more devoted to her phone and she did not get affected by children’s absence, Hariom claimed.

“I suspected she was having an affair and she never let me see her social media accounts. We had a big fight on Thursday night. I knew I could not take it anymore,” Hariom told police.

An FIR had been filed against Hariom under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC at Sector 10A police station. He was produced before the court on Monday that sent him in judicial custody.