Bangalore: Call Centre staffer confesses to colleague's murder

Agencies 
Pic: The Hindu

       
BANGALORE, July 27: A city-based call center employee was on Thursday arrested in connection with the murder of his 25-year-old woman colleague after he confessed to it, a senior police official said.
 
Gururaj Kishore, 27, has confessed to the crime, Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Bipin Gopalakrishna said here.
 
The body of Tanya Banerjee, who was working with Aviva-24/7, was found with nearly 25 injuries, "mainly stab wounds", on a highway near Sakleshpur in Hassan district on Wednesday.
 
Tanya, hailing from West Bengal, was working with Aviva-24/7 in the city where she and Kishore had joined last month before serving another company.
 
This was the second such incident involving a call center employee since a 24-year-old girl was allegedly raped and murdered by the driver of a car leased by her employers in Bangalore in December 2005.

Earlier Report:
The Hindu

HASSAN/BANGALORE: A 24-year-old woman from West Bengal, working as an associate at a BPO (business process outsourcing) orgainisation in Bangalore, was found murdered in the Shiradi Ghats in Sakleshpur taluk of Hassan district on Wednesday morning.

The police gave her name as Tania Banerjee, an employee of Aviva 24/7, a BPO organisation located on Kundalahalli Road on the outskirts of Bangalore.

After finishing work on Tuesday night, Tania had not returned to her paying guest accommodation on Netaji Road in Fraser Town.

Suspicion

Bangalore Police Commissioner Neelam Achuta Rao told The Hindu that Tania was last seen with her colleague Kishore Gururaj on Tuesday night.

When the local police contacted him on Wednesday, he gave inconsistent statements and told them that he was going to Sakleshpur.

The needle of suspicion points towards him, the Police Commissioner said.

A bus driver noticed Tania's body lying in the middle of the road, near Maranahalli, on National Highway 48, about 18 km from Sakleshpur and alerted the police.

Stab wounds

Hassan Superintendent of Police Panduranga H. Rane said Tania had been stabbed in the neck, chest and abdomen. While her clothes and jewellery were intact, her mobile phone was missing.

As it had been raining in the area, the body was drenched. "We established her identity on the basis of her identity card," Mr. Rane said.

Tania, the daughter of Kalidas Banerjee, was from Howrah.

She had been staying at the paying guest accommodation in Bangalore for the past two and a half years.

Anitha Singh, who runs the paying guest accommodation, told The Hindu that Kishore had been after Tania. "He had been going around telling everyone in his office that Tania was his wife. After Tania learnt of it, she had warned him," she said.

`Not reachable'

`Tania normally came home around 10.30 p.m. When she did not return till late in the night on Tuesday, I tried to contact her, and also Kishore, around midnight. But their mobile phones were not reachable. Around 4 a.m. on Wednesday, when I called Kishore and enquired about Tania, he claimed that he last saw her going with some friends on Tuesday night," she said.

SMS received

Tania's friend Ajay and her roommate Shameem received an SMS from her mobile phone on Wednesday morning.

The message said that she was going to Kolkata for her birthday.

"I suspect that someone else sent the SMS from her mobile phone," Ms. Singh said.

Joined last month

Meanwhile, the chief operating officer of Aviva 24/7, Nagaraj, said Tania had joined the BPO firm last month. She was not taking the company vehicle to come to the workplace or to go back home.

"She left the office around 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning the police informed us about her murder. We do not know what happened after she left the office," Mr. Nagaraj said.

He claimed that he was not aware of what had transpired between Tania and Kishore at the office.