A man is believed to have murdered his wife, doubting her fidelity, and cut her body into the four pieces before dumping it in a public well in suburban Manapakkam.

The police came to know about the murder by a sand agent after foul smell started emanating from the well on Friday.

The police fished out three plastic bags containing legs, hands and the torso of the woman from the unused well in Periyar colony. The police believe that the body parts belonged to Jaya, 35, wife of Sethuraman, 40, a sand agent staying in the same colony. However, her head was not traced till Friday evening.

“By the time police reached the scene to track the origin of bad smell, Sethuraman had vanished. He was there till the morning. He had even poured two bottles of phenol into the well when the local residents started talking about the bad smell coming from the well.

So, we assume that the body parts we fished out from the well belonged to his wife Jaya, because he had regular quarrels with her,” the police said.

It is not clear when he killed his wife. She was missing since Deepavali. “It seems she would take off on one week or 10 days’ tours regularly without telling her husband.

This had infuriated Sethuraman and he believed that she was having affairs. In the absence of Jaya, he used to take care of their 15-year-old and 13-year-old daughters,” the police said. On Friday morning, he had looked up his daughters in school and told them that he will be back only after a couple of days.