The man, 60-year-old Aliyu Hussaini of Aisha Kunu Ward in Mubi North Local Government Area, voluntarily surrendered himself to a police station and made a confessional statement that surprised the officials to whom he submitted himself.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Sulaiman Yahaya Ngurore, who gave an update of the case to DAILY POST on Friday, said Hussaini reported that he had a fight with a stranger only to discover after she had died, that it was his wife.
He said the man had been confined to police custody and that the command is now investigating the man’s state of mental health because the strangeness of his confession prompted the state Commissioner of Police, CP Madaki Audu, to constitute an investigative team for that purpose.
Recalling what Aliyu Hussaini told the police, the PPRO said, “Aliyu, more commonly called Baba Galadi, came to us to report that he fought a stranger who came to his house, to the extent that he used knife to cut him severally, only to realise afterwards that the ‘stranger’ was actually his own wife.”
The PPRO said this was difficult to comprehend, but that the policemen went to his house and found that the person in question was indeed his wife, by name Sabuwa Aliyu, 40 years old, lying in a pool of blood, and that she was taken to the hospital where she was confirmed dead.
“The man was arrested while the CP directed men of the anti-homicide unit of the state CID to visit the place (Mubi) to take over the case and investigate it properly,” he added.
He said that already, a hospital card had been found among Aliyu’s personal effects which shows that he is a psychiatric patient, but that the police would not rely on the card even as it bears his name.
“The card does not conclude the matter of his health status. Our men are still investigating,” he said.
Meanwhile, there is another angle to the story as a witness, who claimed to have seen the corpse of Sabuwa and noticed that some body parts were missing, expressed the opinion that her death was a ritual murder.
