An Indian father has been charged with murdering his estranged wife at her social housing unit in country Victoria before filming his two young children playing on scooters outside and praising Hindu and Islamic deities.
Prem Kumar, 45, posted three videos on Facebook on Tuesday morning while his ex-wife Anu, 32, allegedly lay dead inside her home in Cobram, where the three had been living for about two years.
Kumar was arrested on Tuesday, charged with murder, and faced Shepparton Magistrates Court on Wednesday. He did not apply for bail and will appear in court again on December 1, The Age reported.
Three videos posted on social show Kumar, who lived in Dandenong in Melbourne, encouraged the two young boys to say they were safe and repeat after him while wearing an orange headscarf.
“Say ‘I am safe, Brahma, Allah, Vishnu, Shiva, all messengers prophets save me’,” Kumar said with one child in his lap.
“Say ‘see you in Dandenong’.”
In a second video he filmed the kids playing on scooters outside the home, and in the third the children had changed clothes and were wearing traditional Indian dress.
“Say ‘glory be to Brahma, glory be to almighty Allah, glory be to paradise, heaven, Australia’,” Kumar said.
“You are the king of Saudi Arabia. Be like a king.”
A local said she saw a man who appeared to be Kumar doing pushups outside the unit before he was removed from the premises and into the police station.
Header image: Left, Kumar and his one of his children. Right, the children outside the home (Facebook).
