A scorned woman is currently on the run after she doused her husband’s pregnant lover with acid in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia on Tuesday, January 10th.
The victim, Pheng Sreyla, 23, yesterday described how she was held and beaten by the wife and several family members of her lover, 36-year-old Choem Vuthy.
“While they were beating me, the suspect grabbed two bottles and poured them down on my head,” she said. “I felt very hot on my head, face and my eyes; it was like fire.”
Sreyla, a garment worker at a small handicraft manufacturer, was collecting her paycheck when she was allegedly set upon by Vuthy’s wife, Chhum Savun, 34, along with Savun’s mother, Huy Van, 66, and siblings, Chhum Savarng, 37, and Chhum Sarvuth, 28.
“Now I cannot see, and the doctor told me that if I still cannot see in two weeks, I will be blind forever,” Sreyla said through tears.
Returning to her Ralaing Kroeul commune home for police interviews, Sreyla said she was seeking justice. She is three months pregnant with Vuthy’s child.
“I know that I love her husband, but I have never wanted them to get divorced. I told the suspect that I am willing to be the second wife,” she said.
Mech Sophoan, Samraong Tong district deputy police chief in charge of serious crimes, said the mother and siblings of Savun had been arrested, but Savun, who he considered the mastermind of the attack, had fled.
Police were also seeking another man, Chea Ros, 36, who was suspected of being involved. Sophoan said the chief suspect’s sister, Savarng, claimed not to know that acid would be spilled in the ambush.
“But it might be that my sister is jealous of the victim, who had an affair with her husband for years and urged her husband to divorce [my sister] and live with her,” she said, according to Sophoan.
