Wife wounds nailed ‘lefty’ husband

CHENNAI: Security camera footage from a school and apartment complex near Hemaraj Jain’s house in Vepery helped investigators identify him as the killer of his 48-year-old wife Manju Devi, but a crucial piece of evidence was that the stab injuries were to the right of her neck — meaning that the killer was most likely left-handed.
When investigators questioned relatives of the couple, they confirmed that Jain was left-handed.
A doctor who conducts postmortems told TOI that left-handed people almost never use their right hand when suddenly provoked.
Before police arrested Jain on Sunday and charged him with the crime, he tried to stage the crime scene to make it appear that robbers killed his wife and made away with gold jewellery from their house. Jain, who runs an electrical store in Sowcarpet, said he was away at work at the time.
The couple’s daughter Pooja, 21 told police officers that she was with her mother till 5.15 pm on Friday, after which she went to meet a friend. This gave them a rough time frame for when the murder was committed.
“We scrutinised security camera footage from a school and an apartment complex nearby and saw only Hemaraj Jain enter the house,” said additional commissioner of police (south) Abash Kumar.
Jain arrived home on his scooter at 5.27 pm, parked the bike near the gate and entered the gate at 5.34 pm. When he left the house at 6.02 pm, he was wearing a different set of clothes and was carrying a bag.
Two autorickshaw drivers also confirmed that Jain returned to his house.
Investigators had enough evidence to arrest Jain by Saturday but did not disturb him because he was busy performing the last rites for his wife. A day later when police grilled him with the evidence, he confessed to the crime and told them he had killer her in frustration after the couple had a heated argument.
Manju Devi reportedly opposed every decision that Jain took, but the last straw was when she refused to accompany him to Kolkata to meet their 23-year-old son Ashish Gunj’s bride-to-be and her family. The families had fixed the wedding on March 10.
In the minutes before the murder, Manju Devi had an argument with her husband over the trip and asked him to cancel the tickets.
Police recovered the knife he used to kill his wife after Jain confessed to police that he had dumped it in a bag in a garbage bin near Basin Bridge. Jain, who claimed that robbers killed his wife and made away with 1kg of gold jewellery, had hidden jewellery in a bedroom in his house.