The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is prosecuting an involuntary manslaughter case in Punakha District Court. The case involves four members of a family in Dzomey Gewog.
They are the deceased’s wife, two brother-in-laws and mother-in-law. One of the brother-in-laws who is 27 year-old is the prime accused. The OAG has charged him with involuntary manslaughter, while the rest face charges of failure to report the crime and tampering with dead body.
The case was forwarded to the court last Friday. The incident occurred on the night of July 1. According to OAG, the deceased who was in his late 30s went berserk after drinking on the night of the incident. He turned violent and threatened to set his house on fire. His wife and two step children tried to control him but could not.
Scared by the deceased’s aggressive and violent behavior, one of the children, the step-daughter, then left home to sleep at her maternal grandmother’s house, which was nearby. As she left, she saw her step-father following her. So, she hid outside instead of going to her grandmother’s house.
Thinking his step-daughter has gone inside, the drunken step-father went to the grandmother and started picking fights. That’s when the accused arrived at the scene. He happened to drop by to discuss some other matter.
Seeing the deceased in a violent state, the prime accused then tried to calm down the deceased but the deceased hit him with a knife with its cover on at first. Seconds later, the deceased removed the knife from the cover and started flashing at him.
In defense, the prime accused snatched the knife and hit back. The deceased got struck on the neck and fell to death immediately.
The suspect with the help of his brother are then said to have removed the body from the scene and buried it underground below a nearby road. However, fearing that others would become suspicious about the deceased’s sudden disappearance, the accused retrieved his body two days after the incident and cremated it on July 5.
However, the police came to know about it on July 30, almost a month later, and launched an investigation into the case. The police forwarded the case to the OAG on August 22.
