Tharema Vejayan Govindasamy, 38, was promptly arrested when he showed up at the Police Cantonment Complex before 10am.

The lifeless body of his estranged wife, Madam Smaelmeeral Abdul Aziz, 32, was found at about 4.45am on Sunday, at the foot of Block 181, Stirling Road. A trail of blood led to the 11th and 13th storeys.

A witness had seen a man with a moustache and wavy hair standing over the dead woman and staring down at her before disappearing.

Madam Smaelmeeral lived in nearby Lengkok Bahru, having moved out of the couple's matrimonial home in Jurong West Central several months ago.

Yesterday, nearly four hours after he was arrested, a handcuffed Tharema was escorted by five police officers to his Jurong West Central flat on the 13th floor.

Dressed in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, the father of two glared at a lone reporter who was standing nearby and uttered 'why, why', as he was let into the four-room flat.

In the flat at the time was one of his tenants, a 21-year-old China national.

It emerged that Tharema kept one room for himself and his two children - a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl - and rented out the other two rooms to seven foreign workers.

A neighbour said he last saw the two children five days ago, preparing to go out with their father. The children's whereabouts now are not known.

Tharema's room, wedged between one room let out to three China nationals and another rented out to four Indian workers, was locked and declared out of bounds to the tenants.

But the living room was filled with a cot, a crib and a toy bicycle. On the table was a photograph of a girl, believed to be his daughter, and a baby's bottle with some milk which had curdled from having been left for too long.

On the living room wall hung a long metal sword with a skull symbol on the handle, and another about a third its size. A large-size television and a sofa set dominated the rest of the living room.

The Chinese national present in the flat, who wanted to be known only as Mr Ping, moved into one of the rooms a fortnight ago.

Speaking in Mandarin, he said he hardly spoke to his landlord because of the language barrier. He last saw Tharema a few days ago, and was shocked to see his face in the newspapers yesterday.

Yesterday, Tharema spent about 20 minutes in the flat before he was escorted down to a parked van and driven away.

Neighbours said police officers had been to the flat a day before and were seen carrying away some items.

They said there were violent quarrels between the husband and wife that went beyond midnight.

It emerged that the couple, who had a civil wedding, had been in the process of getting divorced.

They were married on June 15, 2002, despite reservations expressed by the wife's family. He was last known to be an odd-job worker.

A neighbour said Tharema, who bought the resale flat more than two years ago, was seen several times at the void deck with another woman.

The dead woman's uncle was quoted in a media report as saying she could not look after the children, and had wanted the husband to look after them.

This was what she told a judge during a divorce hearing, he said.

She had turned up at the flat recently, he added, to tend to the children when they fell ill.

vijayan@sph.com.sg