A 44-year-old woman, with the help of her lover and two others, allegedly hacked her ex-army soldier husband into six pieces in a village here, police on Tuesday said.
The accused dumped the body parts in different locations to conceal the identity of the victim.
The incident came to light Saturday with the discovery of severed hands and legs, wrapped in polythene, in a field near Khareed village under Sikandarpur Police Station.
The victim was later identified as Devendra Kumar, a 62-year-old retired Army personnel, police said.
Maya Devi, his wife, at first tried to mislead the investigation by filing a missing person complaint on May 10 at the Ballia City Kotwali Police Station.
Things took a dramatic turn, when her own daughter, Ambli Gautam, testified against Maya Devi and accused her of killing her father.
Based on the complaint, Maya Devi was booked under charges of murder and arrested.
Ballia Superintendent of Police Omveer Singh told reporters on Tuesday that Maya Devi confessed to killing her husband with the help of her lover, truck driver Anil Yadav, and two others, Mithilesh Patel and Satish Yadav.
Mithilesh Patel was arrested on Monday, while Anil Yadav and Satish Yadav were arrested on Tuesday.
According to police, the group killed Devendra Kumar inside his home in Bahadurpur locality and then cut the body into six parts, severing both arms, legs, and the head, before dumping the pieces in separate locations to prevent identification.
At Maya Devi's instance, police recovered the torso from a well in Khareed Darauli village.
On Tuesday, during a vehicle check near Town Polytechnic in Parikhara, police accosted Anil Yadav and Satish Yadav, who fired gunshots at the team. Police in retaliatory fire shot Anil Yadav in the leg. He is recuperating in the district hospital.
A country-made pistol, a spent cartridge, and a live round were recovered from him, and from Satish Yadav, the murder weapon.
The SP said Maya Devi orchestrated the murder because she had an affair with Anil Yadav.
The brutal killing, which has triggered shock and anger in the area, comes as the latest in a string of similarly executed spousal murders that took place in Uttar Pradesh in recent months.
In March, a former merchant navy officer in Meerut was killed by his wife and her lover, who stuffed his body in a drum and filled it with cement.
In another incident in Deoria last month, a woman and her lover killed her husband just ten days after he returned from Dubai, cut his body in two, and dumped it in a suitcase in a field.
He was identified by the airline tag still attached to the luggage.
In Auraiya, a newlywed man was killed last month barely 15 days into marriage by his wife and her lover, who hired a contract killer.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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