Pune techie paid with life for resenting guard's 'stare'

Infosys software engineer K. Rasila Raju paid with her life for objecting to a security guard staring at her while she worked in office on Sunday evening, police said in Pune on Monday.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Hinjewadi Ganesh Shinde told mediapersons that the security guard was arrested in Mumbai early Monday.

An Assamese working as a security guard, the 26-year Bhaben Saikia was charged with Rasila's murder and remanded to police custody till February 4 by a Pune court on Monday evening.

According to Shinde, the victim, K. Rasila Raju, 25, was a software engineer from Kerala and had been working with Infosys at its building in the Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park, Hinjewadi, since 2015.

Though it was her weekly off, she had come to office to complete a project and had been engaged in online communication with her colleagues at the company's Bengaluru office, police said.

Shinde said that the victim had objected to Saikia staring at her when she came out of her office and threatened to complain to his bosses.

Around 5 p.m., Saikia entered her ninth floor office and allegedly strangled her with a computer cord.

Rasila hailed from Ojhampoayil village near Peramabara in Kozhikode district of Kerala, and her family has been informed of the tragedy.

According to a complaint lodged by her team manager, Abhijit Kothari, Rasila had reported for work around 2.30 p.m. and was alone after another colleague left at 3 p.m.

Around 6.20 p.m., Kothari had attempted to contact her but got no response and the other team members, who were online, also reported that she had been incommunicado for an hour both on landline phones and her mobile phone.

Finally, at 7.30 p.m. Kothari called the building security and asked them to check on her.

Shortly afterwards, a security guard who went with an access card informed him of the tragedy which befell Rasila in the conference room of the office.

Kothari, who rushed there from his home, said other security guards, a doctor and police also arrived and found Rasila with blood splattered on her face. She was assaulted brutally and strangulated with a yellow net LAN wire.

The police immediately checked the CCTV footage which showed that Rasila entered the room around 3.05 p.m., came out for a break around 5 p.m. and later Saikia followed her into the office, though he was not authorised to enter that area.

This is the second sensational murder of a young techie in Pune, Maharashtra's IT, culture and academic capital.

A 23-year-old software engineer with Capegemini, Antara D. Das, was stabbed to death by her former colleague Santosh Kumar on the night of December 24.

The victim's parents informed police that Kumar had been stalking her for eight months and trying to force her into marriage, but she rejected his overtures. Kumar was arrested a week later.

--IANS

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