Had a proper background verification been done by TCS at the time of hiring Venkat, Vysya wouldn’t have gone alone to meet this guy who was accused of killing another girl in a similar fashion six years ago, is the general opinion among techies in IT majors including TCS.
Venting their frustration over the incident, S Elangovan, a techie and coordinator of the Save Tamils Movement, observed that it was saddening to think that a simple background verification of the candidate would have exposed his criminal past.
He may have been acquitted in a court of law for lack of evidence but Venkat, son of retired BSNL employee Kandaswamy, had committed a heinous offence.
Elangovan urged that the prevalent male chauvinistic themes on the screen and commodification of women as mere sex objects should be stopped.
Recalling the recent rape and murder of another TCS employee, Uma Mageshwari, near Siruseri, he alleged that the IT majors had not taken any meaningful measures to ensure the safety of their women employees.
Chronicling the cases of violence against women by spurned men, including the acid attacks on Vidya and Vinodhini, Elangovan felt that the lack of transparency in the management of security and safety aspects in
IT majors could not be ignored.
Another techie working with TCS, requesting anonymity, confessed that no one had been aware of Venkat’s past.
“We were working with a man who murdered a girl, and did not even know. After six years he has repeated the offence, taking another life. A simple alert could have saved our colleague’s life” the employee said.
A TCS spokesperson told Express over the phone from Mumbai that they did indeed carry out background verification of employees before hiring them.
“We do it with the help of different agencies and we can’t name those agencies,” he said.
Asked specifically about Venkat, the spokesperson maintained that he was not at liberty to share private details about employees.
“We are saddened and shocked to learn about this terrible incident. Our sympathies and prayers go out to the family in this hour of grief,” an official statement read.
accused already held for murder in 2008
The techie, Venkat, was arrested in 2008 for the murder, in a similar manner, of an 18-year-old, who turned down his advances. The case pertains to the stabbing of S Praveena of Municipal Colony in Erode on July 18, 2008. According to the prosecution, Venkat, then an MSc student at a private college in Perundurai, barged into the girl’s house and demanded that she marry him. She had already turned down his proposal following stiff opposition from her parents. The girl was stabbed 18 times and bled to death. Venkat was arrested and the case went to trial, but the accused was acquitted of all charges in August 2009, based on the testimony of the girl’s mother.
A gold medallist in b.ed and a timid girl
Vysya’s relatives said she was a gold medallist in BEd and was always known for her timidity and for keeping to herself. Vysaya’s younger brother Vaishanth, who just finished his BE from a city college, said his sister used to get homesick often. “I would give her a ‘missed call’ and she used to call me back. If she said she was not feeling all right and was missing home, I would put her on a bus from Tambaram and she would head home. She would be fine after a couple of days and when she returned I would pick her up and drop her at her hostel,” he said. “On Monday night too I gave her a missed call around 8.30 pm. But she did not return my call,” he said, fighting his tears.
