A 63-year-old man from Kanchiguru in Karnataka’s Kadur taluk shot his wife dead on Monday, reportedly for having refused to divorce him for 2 decades. The accused, identified as Basappa, is a retired school teacher. He was arrested by Sakharayapatna police on Tuesday.
Basappa and Jayamma had not been living together for several years due to various marital discords. It is reported that Jayamma had also moved court seeking support money and that the two had often fought over this. He allegedly told police that his wife was involved in an affair with another man, which led to their arguments.
Though he’d been seeking divorce for 20 years now, Jayamma had allegedly refused to give him one. On Monday night, Basappa walked into his wife’s house and shot her five times using a country-made gun. She died on the spot. Following this, he surrendered himself to the Sakharayapatna police. He allegedly had assaulted two men, identified as his brother-in-law and nephew, prior to committing the crime.
The couple had married 30 years ago and were living together only for 5 years before they started quarrelling and began living apart, though they both resided in the same village. They have two sons, one who works as a government school teacher and the other works with the Karnataka State Road Transportation Corporation (KSRTC). He had approached her seeking for divorce on multiple occasions, but she had refuted him at every juncture, which provoked him to kill her.
Jayamma was taken immediately to the Government McGann Hospital in Shivamogga, where doctors declared her brought dead.