A man was arrested for manslaughter after he allegedly dropped his wife from the roof of a six-story dormitory last week in Guangdong Province, according to a newspaper.

The 24-year-old woman surnamed Yang landed on a car and suffered many broken bones from the 20-meter fall, Guangzhou Daily reported today. It will take three to six months for the Henan Province native to fully recover, the report said.

A domestic dispute may have sparked the incident at Humeng Township in Dongguang City, the newspaper said.

Yang told police that her husband surnamed Li asked her to meet him at the dormitory, held her up on a barrier on the roof and dropped her on October 18. However, Li denied the accusation and claimed his wife jumped, the report said.

He allegedly admitted the night before the accident that he had poured beer and cigarette ashes into his wife's mouth because he suspected she was having a love affair with a manager of the shopping market where the couple worked, the report added.

"He asked me to wait at the roof of our dorm building that night under the excuse of returning my ID card to me," Yang told the newspaper. "When I was unguarded, he held me up and put me onto the protection barrier.

"He told me: 'You do not need to work tomorrow.' Then he dropped me," Yang was quoted as saying. "I tried to grab his clothes but failed. I lost consciousness then and found I was in the hospital when I woke up."

Li and his family offered 2,000 yuan (US$285.7) in compensation, but the sum was far from enough to cover Yang’s medical expenses, the woman's father told the newspaper.

Li and Yang met in Shenzhen City in 2003. The woman eloped with the man a year later. They have a son and a daughter. After getting married the couple often quarreled and their relationship gradually turned sour, the report said.

(Shanghai Daily October 27, 2008)