DH News Service Bangalore:
After raping Prathiba in a bushy area in
Anjanapura near Thalagattapura in the early hours of Tuesday, the cab driver,
Shiva Kumar alias Shiva, slit her throat and dumped the body in a nearby pit.Twentyfour-year-old Prathiba Srikantamurthy — a computer engineer employed with Hewlett Packard in Bangalore — thought she was embarking on another routine shift at her workplace when she was picked up by the company cab in the dead of the night.
She had no inkling that she was being driven to her death by a lecherous man who would not hesitate to kill the victim after satisfying his bestial instincts.
After raping Prathiba in a bushy area in Anjanapura near Thalagattapura in the early hours of Tuesday, the cab driver, Shiva Kumar alias Shiva, slit her throat and dumped the body in a nearby pit.
Prathiba, hailing from Mysore, had tied the knot to her lover Pawan Kumar Shetty, working for a finance company in Koramangala, less than a year ago. The couple were to celebrate their first wedding anniversary on January 21.
Last seen in her house in 15th cross, Kumaraswamy Layout on the night of December 12, Prathiba was supposed to return at 11 am the next day. Srinivas, her Mysore-based maternal uncle who was visiting his niece in Bangalore, waited for her till 4 pm and then called her office.
On being told that she had not come to work the previous night, Srinivas lodged a complaint with the Kumaraswamy layout police, alleging that she had been kidnapped by the company cab driver who had picked her up the previous night.
Vital clue
Inspector Devaiah who took up the investigation, checked the drivers’ list of the company and found out that one Jagadeesh was assigned to pick up the employees on Kanakpura Road-Kumarasawamy Layout route.
Jagadeesh led the police further on their trail. Jagadeesh who was supposed to pick Prathiba up, had made a call to her mobile only to be told that she was being driven to the workplace in the Tata Sumo being driven by Shivakumar. She even passed on her mobile phone set to Shiva for confirming the same. However, Shiva was not smart enough to keep his identity in the dark and told Jagadeesh that he was taking Prathiba as per orders by “higher-ups”, police said.
The final phone call lists of the cell phones of Shiva and Prathiba also confirmed that they had interacted. Shiva, (22) a native of Nanjapura in Ramanagara taluk, was finally arrested from IBM office in Electronic City on Thursday night. After committing the crime, he opted to ferry employees of IBM instead of HP, police said.
Employed with private travel agent Renukaiah of Kanakpura Road, Shiva had been hired by SRS Travels to pick and drop employees of IBM and HP’s business process outsourcing unit in Electronic City.
On interrogation, Shiva confessed to the crime and led the police to the site of crime, where Prathiba’s body was lying in a ditch.
A desperate move
Shiva in his confession said that he was desperate for a woman as his wife was away from Bangalore. He set his eyes on woman staffers of HP and began randomly calling women from the employees’ phone list maintained in alphabetical order by drivers.
Before calling Prathiba on the fateful Monday night, Shiva even called two of her woman colleagues. While one lady was already on her way to the office, another was aware that Shiva was not assigned to pick her up. Shiva was supposed to have taken the Ramamurthynagar-K R Puram route on that night, the police said.
An unsuspecting Prathiba fell prey to Shiva, who lied to her that he was picking her up instead of Jagadeesh. That he had picked her up on earlier occasions, made her suspect nothing. When the cab started going the wrong way, Prathiba questioned Shiva.
She believed him when he said that he had to pick up someone else.
When the cab was about to reach Anjanapura Layout, she asked him again only to be greeted by his knife.
At a desolate place, Shiva stopped the cab and pulled Prathiba out of the vehicle. Desperate, Prathiba offered her credit cards, valuables and cash and begged to be spared.
Unmoved by her pleas, he raped Prathiba and then slit her throat, the police said. He also took away Rs 300, the cards and mobile phone from his victim after killing her.
Body in Mysore
Meanwhile, Prathiba’s body was brought to her father-in-law N Shamasundar’s house on Geetha Road in Chamarajpuram of Mysore at around 6.30 pm on Friday, where a large number of her relatives and friends had gathered.
Prathiba’s father Srikantamurthy was killed in a fire accident in Mysore, five years ago. A shell-shocked mother, Gowramma, refused to come to Bangalore after she heard about her daughter’s gory end.
DRIVE TO GRISLY END
Prathiba receives a call from accused Shiva at about
12.40 am on Dec 13
She leaves home with him at 1 am in a Tata Sumo; a few minutes later Jagadeesh, the driver on her route, calls
She says she is on her way
to office
She makes futile attempts to call her husband before being raped at about 2 am
Shiva snatches her phone and removes the sim card
She tries to raise an alarm, he panics and slits her throat
Police trace the body on the night of Dec 15
[Deccan Herald, Saturday, December 17, 2005]