NEW DELHI: Finding his 50-year-old wife allegedly drunk when he returned home from work, a bus driver Sumit Lama beat her to death with a stick in West Delhi’s Moti Nagar on Sunday night, the police said.

The suspect, Lama, who works for a travel agency, was caught from Rajouri Garden soon after the crime just as he was preparing to flee to Nepal, said Deepak Purohit, deputy commissioner of police (West district).

The DCP identified the murdered woman as Rita Thapa, a homemaker who lost her first husband a few years ago. Thapa and Lama married in 2014 and had been living in a rented home in Moti Nagar’s Basai Darapur neighborhood with Thapa’s son from her first marriage.

On Monday morning, Thapa’s son called the police to inform him that his mother was murdered at their home. “We reached the spot to find that it was a friendly entry and the belongings in the house were not disturbed. We deducted that the murder was by someone known to the woman,” said the DCP.

Soon, Krishna told the police that his mother and his stepfather had quarreled a few days ago. Since Lama was missing, the police launched a manhunt for him and nabbed him soon from Rajouri Garden.

“During interrogation, he confessed to killing his wife. He said that he suspected his wife of being involved in an extramarital relationship,” said the DCP.

As for the trigger for the murder, the DCP said, “When he returned home from work on Sunday night, he found his wife drunk. He was enraged and got into a fight with her during which he beat her up with a lathi and punched and kicked her. When she died, he escaped from the crime scene,” said the officer.

(With inputs from Agencies)