A former associate professor at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska medical institute is being held in police custody for cutting off his wife’s lips with a knife and then eating them in Stockholm.

According to Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper, the man flew into a jealous rage over suspicions that his much younger wife had been having an affair.

The man, who is 52, admitted to cutting off his wife’s lips in a closed court hearing, the paper reported, saying it was retaliation.

‘It was honour related. He doesn’t seem to regret a thing. He believes she insulted him,’ a source with knowledge of the matter told the paper.

The assault was so brutal that the prosecutor tried to have him charged for attempted murder. But the court sought to downgrade the charge to aggravated assault.

Ingela Hessius Ekman, who represents the victim, said her client may have suffered irreparable damage.

‘She has very serious injuries, doctors can not yet determine whether she can be healed or not,’ she told Aftonbladet.

The man, who is from Iran, was doing post-Doctoral research at the institute in 2010.

He is now employed by a university in Tehran, but still lived partly and Stockholm, where he collaborated with his old research group at the university, and used its email services and library through a ‘declaration of association.’

‘It is, of course, a very tragic story,’ says Bengt Norrving, the institute’s director.

‘But since the researcher in question is not an employee of Karolinska Institutet we are unable to consider legal action.’