Hoshiarpur, India - When villagers went to investigate the reason for loud chanting of mantras emanating from a house in their vicinity on Wednesday, nothing would have prepared them for this gory sight: Lakhvir Singh, 34, was hacking his wife, whose semi-nude form lay at his feet in a pool of blood.
The shocking incident, fuelled by a misplaced belief in black magic, has sent shockwaves through Nawa Bhangla village, about 6 km from Mukerain, in Hoshiarpur.
Lakhvir used a butcher's knife to sever his 31-year-old wife, Sapna's left arm from the elbow and slowly chopped the fingers of her right hand into small pieces.
He also slashed his wife's lips, meticulously wiping his knife on a wooden palm-shaped board after every cut. The reason: "The shaitaan gone into her," he said.
The man said he feared someone had done black magic and set the shaitaan after his children. But as he chased the demon away, it got into his own feet.
"I slashed my feet, but then it jumped into my wife's hand. I cut her fingers, but the shaitaan only kept moving to different parts of her body and I kept chasing it with a knife," Lakhvir said, when asked what made him commit the gruesome act.
Lakhvir was nabbed by the police after shell-shocked villagers reported what they had seen. "I heard a sound, as if something was being chopped, and then we heard some mantras being chanted," said a villager.
"Then we saw Lakhvir sitting next to his wife in an open verandah inside his house. We knocked on his door but he wouldn't open."