Police in India arrested a man on Tuesday after a home theatre music system he gifted to his ex-girlfriend on her wedding day exploded, killing her husband and his brother. Four more people were injured in the bombing, including an 18-month-old child.
On April 3, 22-year-old newly-wed Hemendra Merawi was opening gifts with his brother a few days after his wedding in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The gifts included a music system from his wife’s ex, 33-year-old Sarju Markam.
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When Merawi and his brother plugged it in and switched it on, it exploded. Police said Markam had fitted the music system with a bomb and placed it with other gifts at the wedding venue on March 31.
“He used ammonium nitrate, petrol and gunpowder retrieved from firecrackers,” police superintendent Lal Umed Singh told the media. “He gift-wrapped it to avoid any suspicion.”
The impact of the explosion was so violent that the walls and roof of the room collapsed. Merawi was killed instantly and his brother, who was rushed to the hospital, died from his injuries.
The explosion caused panic, with bombings in Chhattisgarh state usually linked to tribal communist separatist group Naxal, who have been engaged in a long-standing armed conflict with the Indian government. Police, however, confirmed that Markam has no link with the movement. Markam is currently employed as a car mechanic in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh and, according to the police, had previously worked in a mine in Chhattisgarh where he learned to assemble explosives.
Markam is being charged under India’s Explosive Substances Act, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Police said Markam confessed to rigging the gift with explosives as he was angry with his ex-girlfriend for getting married. The two broke up recently after the now widowed bride found out he was already married with two sons. They had been dating since 2020.
“After she realised the truth, she refused to marry him. But he kept threatening her to marry him,” said additional police superintendent Manisha Thakur, adding that Markam had threatened Merawi twice before the wedding.
The incident forms part of a growing trend of violence perpetrated by rejected men in India that authorities are classifying as “jilted lover syndrome.” Latest official figures show crimes against women rose by 15.3 percent in 2021, the majority of which were perpetrated by intimate male partners.
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