BENGALURU: “I think I’ve been stabbed,” and with these words Prabha bid farewell to her husband who eagerly waits for her call in Bangalore every night. As she closed her eyes for the last time, she knew she would never see her daughter. The instant she felt a pain numbing her senses, she knew her visit home this May will remain a dream. Lying in a pool of bed at the Amos Street in Sydney, perhaps her last hope was for a miracle that will spare her life. Thousands of miles from where she breathed her last, a home in Bangalore knew a mother will never return, a wife will never call and a daughter was lost forever.
Prabha Arun Kumar (40), a woman IT consultant, employed with Bengaluru-based tech firm MindTree, was stabbed to death while she was walking home from work in the Australian city on March 7. On the day of the incident, she had to work overtime and was returning home around 8.30 pm. She called her husband Arun Kumar as was her daily routine. When she was nearing her house, she told him that a big-built man was standing near a park close to her house, and was following her. Seconds later, Arun heard Prabha telling the man, “Take whatever you want, please don’t hurt me.” But the next thing he heard was, “He stabbed me.” The phone went dead, and repeated calls to her number went unanswered.
When the news of her death was broken to her father Mahabala Shetty, he was inconsolable. “I should have asked her to come home earlier this year, I could have seen my child in flesh and blood,” cried Mahabala. Prabha was to return to her Bengaluru home in May. Her father lamented, “Many times I told my wife nobody had a better daughter. One of the incidents which even today is etched in my memories was that, she woke me up one day in the morning. For some reason I could not wake up that day, but she knew what works I would take up in the cowshed and the garden. She had finished those chores even before I got up. Despite all the work she did she never missed a class and it was such pleasure that she got full attendance year after year at the school and college.”
Her nine-year-old daughter Meghana does not know her visit to Australia, planned for April before her mother returned home in May, won’t come through. “We are not trying to hide anything from her, but we don’t want to shock her with the news when her father is not here,” said Thrijesh Jayachandra, a civil contractor and Arun’s nephew. Her relatives alleged that despite numerous messages to the External Affairs Ministry after the incident, there was no response. “We were lucky that Arun had a valid visa. If not, the process may have been delayed. There was a toll free number of the Australian embassy in India, but nobody answered this number,” he said.
Putting all speculations to rest, the police declared that Prabha’s murder does not appear to be racially motivated and may be an incident of ‘random attack’. India’s Consul General in Sydney Sanjay Sudhir said, “There is no evidence which I have seen that indicates any racial undertone to this attack.” Michael Willing, New South Wales (NSW) Homicide Squad Commander Detective Superintendent, said the case is being investigated. “Could this be a random attack? Well, yes it could. It could be a whole range of scenarios... and we are considering all of them,” said Willing.
Prabha’s husband reached Sydney on Monday and her body was handed over to him on Thursday as reported by police in Sydney. A distressed Arun and her brother Shankar Shetty sought justice for her. “I know that we can’t bring her back but I want, whoever killed my wife, to be brought to justice,” said Arun to an international daily. Her brother too made a personal appeal to his sister’s killer to surrender.