Photo: Weibo

A woman in Southwest China's Sichuan Province was reportedly murdered by her husband while she was asleep, local police said in a statement published on Monday. The case has sparked discussion on social media about whether it was a copycat of another husband-kills-wife case in East China's Zhejiang Province. The previous case drew a lot of attention because of the husband's brutality and calm attitude after the murder. 

The 30-year-old man in Anyue, Sichuan, surnamed Qu, killed his wife in the early morning of July 19 and called the police on July 20 reporting her missing. This resembled the case in Zhejiang, where the murderer, surnamed Xu, killed and dismembered his wife in the early morning and told the police one day later that she had "mysteriously disappeared."

Though the details of Qu's case have not been disclosed, he was found to have dragged a suitcase downstairs in the morning of the day in question by the surveillance camera at his apartment building, China News reported on Monday. In the Zhejiang case, Xu discarded his wife's body in their community's septic tank. 

The similarities between the two murders sparked discussions on social media platform Weibo over whether the reports of Xu's case provoked imitation by Qu, and whether it might lead to more copycat crimes by other potential criminals. 

"The police should not reveal too many details of the murder and should just emphasize their verdicts and punishment so that the case will serve more as a deterrent, not for a copycat effect," said one comment.  

Prior to Qu's case, a woman in Haikou, South China's Hainan Province was reported to have been hacked to death by her drunk husband on Friday after having a quarrel with him over some family issues. 

The two homicide cases, following on the heels of Xu's sensational murder, have also fueled concerns on social media over women's safety at home. 

A report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2019 on female homicide has spread on the internet and has been cited by many netizens. It mentioned a study indicating that the majority of female homicide victims worldwide were killed by their partners or family. 

 "It's always the husband," a line from Major Crimes, an American television police procedural series, was even trending on Weibo, amid the heated discussion over murder of women.

But some other people pointed out that such wide public attention and concern is simply an aftershock effect of the brutal case in Zhejiang, and will go away soon when reports of cases of this kind become fewer.