Tanya's Murder Takes Curious Turn
Times of India
KOLKATA, July 28: The stabbing of a call centre employee, Tania Banerjee (32), took a curious turn on Thursday after it surfaced that she was arrested for immoral activities from a south Kolkata apartment on August 31, 2005.
Tania, another female call centre employee and kingpin of the racket, Jason Anthony, had been booked under Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act.
DCP Gyanwant Singh said, "We had submitted a charge sheet against all the three in an Alipore court late last year. All three were out on bail."
Police sources said Tania had flown into Kolkata just a week before her arrest. "She was quite aware and confident when she was questioned overnight at the Lalbazar police headquarters," they said.
A senior officer, who had grilled her, quoted her as telling the interrogators that she didn't have any qualms doing what she did.
"She said she did it for fun. Guys enjoyed her company and she liked it. Sometimes she got money for doing it; at other times she got gifts," said an officer.
She flew to Kolkata from Bangalore often, the police claimed. "It's possible that the girls were introduced to Jason through common friends and got involved in the racket. It was easy money for them," said an officer.
Earlier:
Bangalore: The gruesome murder of Aviva call centre employee Tania Banerjee has been cracked. Her colleague Gururaj Kishore confessed on Thursday to having killed her in a fit of rage. Police nabbed Kishore from his Rajajinagar residence around midnight on Wednesday.
Kishore told the police that he was incensed by Tania’s repeated refusal to marry him. He had proposed to marry her despite her past affairs. He said the last straw came when she slapped him and said: ‘What you earn in a month at office, I earn in a single evening. I am not interested in marrying you’.
He said: “On hearing this, I got wild and went for her jugular before stabbing her to death repeatedly with a kitchen knife I had in the car. I then drove around 200 km to Shiradi Ghat and disposed of her body.’’
Tania went missing after leaving her office at 9.30 pm on Tuesday and her body was found on the Sakleshpur national highway early Wednesday. Tania’s father and other relatives are expected to arrive in Bangalore on Friday from Kolkata to claim her body, police said.
In Kishore’s own words: I killed her...
We left our work place at Kundla Halli near Whitefield together in a Honda City car which I had bought under hire purchase scheme two months ago at the instance of Tania. Around 9.40 p.m. on Tuesday, we drove up to Mehkri Circle arguing over my proposal to marry her. When she made damaging statements, I stopped the car at a place between Sadashivanagar-Mehkri Circle and killed her.
‘I created an alibi’
After killing her, I drove on Tumkur Road and reached Nelamangala around 11 p.m. I stopped the car at an isolated place, used her cellphone to send an SMS to her roommate stating that ‘I (Tania) am leaving Bangalore for good and going back to Kolkata’. I then switched off the phone. This I did to create an alibi.
I wanted to dispose of her body in a deep ditch at the Ghat. Since there was frequent vehicular movement on the highway, I was forced to dump her body by the side of the highway and leave the place.
The next morning, I called her father in Kolkata and told him that I dropped Tania at her PG accommodation last night. I had sought his permission to marry Tania in the past, and he had told me to wait till November-December stating that he will come here and perform the wedding.
‘I fell in love with her’
I had known Tania only for the last few months when we worked at a BPO before joining Aviva 24/7 on June 22. I fell in love with her and wanted to marry her despite knowing about her frequent trips to pubs in the city, farm houses on the outskirts, Goa, Ooty and Mysore with other men. She was older to me by five years and she was more interested in sex rather than a relationship. I have not touched her despite she trying to force me into sex.
Tania used to call up daily, recalls father
HOWRAH: In a span of just three years, the size of Kalidas Banerjee's four-member family was reduced
to one, with fate snatching away daughter Tania.
The murder of 32-year-old Tania Banerjee, a call centre employee with Aviva in Bangalore, comes as the latest blow for Banerjee, a resident of Belur in Howrah district of West Bengal.
Banerjee had lost his son Abhijit, a traffic warden, in an accident at Belur Bazar in 2003.
Meghmala, the school teacher wife of the retired assistant commandant of the Railway Protection Force, died last year following a heart attack. She had not been keeping well since her son's death. On Wednesday, fate struck again. His daughter, Tania was found brutally murdered with 25 injuries, mainly stab wounds, on a national highway near Sakleshpur in Karnataka's Hassan district on Wednesday.
Tania, who had gone to Bangalore four years ago, used to call up Banerjee daily, the lonely father recalled. She had even spoken to him on Tuesday night from her office, Aviva-24/7, hours before she was killed, he said.
The father had noticed nothing unusual in her conversation. After passing out from Assembly of God Church School, Tania studied English (Honours) in Scottish Church College, Kolkata. She worked in two other companies in Bangalore before joining Aviva. Tania had told her father that she would be coming home next month to celebrate her birthday.
Instead, her father is leaving for Bangalore on Friday to bring her body back.