A woman in Italy cut off her husband's penis after he insisted that his other wife move in with them.

The Bangladeshi couple had recently moved from the town of Sant'Antonio Abate to the nearby town of Angri in Campania.

The 41-year-old husband had found a larger house that could accommodate an extra person, but his second wife was furious at the prospect of living with his first.

The second wife, 35, allegedly resorted to extreme measures when her husband refused to back down from his idea.

She waited until he had fallen asleep during a post-lunch nap, grabbed a kitchen knife, and sliced off his penis.

Screaming in agony and with blood pouring from the wound, the man stumbled onto a first-floor balcony to call for help.

Two women who had been passing by at the time heard his yells and managed to get into the house, where they attempted to stem the bleeding until an ambulance arrived.

They reportedly put his severed penis on ice in the hopes it could be attached.

But when the man arrived at the hospital in nearby Nocera Inferiore, surgeons said that it would be impossible to reattach his member as it was 'permanently compromised', according to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

They did, however, operate to stem the haemorrhage.

Police arrived at the scene and found the wife pacing around in a dazed state with the bloody knife allegedly still in her hand. 

She was arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Authorities are now also investigating the last meal the man ate in an attempt to find out whether the wife had drugged him before the attack.

The alleged assault is being investigated by a team of Carabinieri police led by Commander Gianfranco Albanese and a local prosecutor, Gianluca Caputo.

'This is a case of unprecedented violence,' said Angelo Pisani, a lawyer and the founder of an organisation that campaigns against domestic abuse, who has offered to defend the husband for free.

'This kind of violence must always be condemned, regardless of who committed it.'

This is not the only incident of its kind.

In 1993, Lorena Bobbitt alleged that she was raped by her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt and, in a desperate act of self-defence, cut off his penis with a kitchen knife as he slept.

After jumping in her car and throwing the severed appendage out the window in Manassas, Virginia, she was charged with malicious wounding.

Authorities were able to locate the member in a field after Lorena described the exact location, and he was reunited with it after a ten-hour surgery.

At her trial, Lorena took the stand and was later acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. 

She was sent to a mental hospital, where she was discharged after a month. Lorena and John Wayne officially divorced in 1995.