Case I: A middle-aged married woman was arrested on Saturday from Hyderabad airport by a joint team of Kotwali and Patrakar Nagar police stations of Patna when she was trying to flee to Australia along with her lover, an engineer based in Punjab. The woman, who has a five-month-old child, had disappeared from her Patna-based home on April 16 taking away Rs 50 lakh and jewellery worth Rs 20 lakh. The husband, Nikhil Kumar, a prominent businessman in the state capital, had lodged a missing complaint in this regard. The woman had met the engineer, who works in a company in Australia, on a popular social networking site and they had fallen for each other. The couple is presently being brought to Patna.

Case II: On May 28, the city police got a shock after a woman and her infant child were found murdered at their home in Mainpura area under Patrakar Nagar police station with husband Santosh Kumar Singh claiming that the crime was committed by dacoits who attacked the house late in the evening. However, investigations found that Santosh had strangled his wife to death after learning about her affair with a youth. The man said his wife had killed their son in a fit of rage after Santosh asked her to keep away from her lover. Thereafter, Santosh killed his wife.

Case III: Shailesh Prasad, a businessman hailing from Motihari who was missing since May 28, was recovered by Patna police cooling his heels at a hotel in Goa. The man had gone missing from Patna, and his wife had taken the matter to the Patna police. Police sources said that the man was having an affair with his sister-in-law and the wife had come to know about it and was constantly fighting with him over the issue. The man had escaped to Goa for the same reason.

Complex relationships in Life in a Metro are just not about the metropolitans now. The urban masses in smaller cities like Patna are going through the same ups and downs. The state capital has been witnessing quite a few cases of couples turning hostile towards each other on the pretext of having an affair with a third person.

Senior police officers admit that such cases are being reported to different police stations of the city time and again, though all of them are veiled under charges of kidnapping or missing diary.

“It is a fact that a lot of cases of illicit affairs do fall under the purview of the police. However, it is not possible to ascertain a definite number of such cases as they are reported as a kidnapping charge or a missing diary. The families of those involved, be it the husband or the wife, never really come down and lodge an FIR, stating that either partner chose to run away. They will either lodge a missing complaint or an FIR of kidnapping against the person involved. The reason for this is the fear of a social backlash,” Patna City superintendent of police (SP) Shivdeep Lande told The Telegraph. Local police stations also admit that such cases had increased.

“We have heard about cases of married people eloping in rural areas. But the state capital has witnessed very few incidents of the same sort. Around eight months back, a husband had come to us and had lodged a missing diary in connection to his wife. A day later, he came back again and gave the police all the details with regard to his wife’s affair with a neighbour. He, though, never accepted that the woman had fled with the neighbour and chose to lodge it as a missing case. Now, similar cases have turned frequent,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

The police said once a case of kidnapping or missing is lodged, it is dealt in the same way. “In 90 per cent of the cases, after recovery, the woman says that she went on her own will with the family members crowing in and pressurising the woman. They say that they had gone to their relative’s place and never accepts that she eloped.

“Nowadays, women have become bolder and smarter. The films and televisions also show so many stories about married men and women falling in love with a third person. It could be an effect of the same. Here, the idea of counselling is very minimal indeed and no couples turn up for such sessions too,” Sujit Kumar, a city-based psychiatrist said.