Fed up with his frequent drinking habit, a 34-year-old woman allegedly strangled her inebriated husband and dumped his body in the septic tank of their house in southwest Delhi’s Krishna Vihar near Najafgarh after hiding it inside a bed box for more than 12 hours last week.

Police said the husband used to abuse her both physically and verbally often after drinking.In order to avoid the stench from spreading, the woman hired some labourers and got the lid of the septic tank cemented. After the crime, the woman moved to her parents’ house with her children.

The woman left her husband’s body to decay inside the septic tank for five days after which she was too traumatised to keep the secret and ended up in confiding with her sister-in-law.

The sister-in-law initially did not believe her. But they later informed the police who recovered the man’s body from the septic tank of the house on Thursday morning.

The woman, identified as Seema, was arrested on charges on Thursday evening for murdering her husband and destroying evidence from the crime scene.

The deceased, Om Bhardwaj, worked as an auto-rickshaw driver in the national capital.

The couple lived with a 10-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter at their two-storey house in Krishna Vihar Colony.