Pakistani woman beheads husband who wanted 4th wife

KARACHI - A Pakistani woman beheaded her husband, chopped up his body and dumped the dismembered parts in a sewerage drain after he announced plans to take a fourth wife, police said yesterday.

Police said Majeeda Khatoon killed her husband, a well-off building contractor, while he was asleep, and cut his body into seven pieces with the help of two male relatives in Gulshan-e-Hadeed, a township on the outskirts of the southern city of Karachi.

"When we questioned her, after the deceased's brother came to us for help, she confessed to the crime," police official Nazar Mohammad Mangrio told Reuters.

Khatoon, 45, was arrested late last week and has been remanded in custody while the police frame charges against her.

Khatoon said her 55-year-old husband had taken other wives and flaunted his infidelity, but she was pushed over the edge when he announced plans to take a fourth wife, according to the police officer.

Islam permits men to take up to four wives, and while polygamy is not the norm in Pakistan, it is not rare either.

- REUTERS