BPO employee found dead

Another BPO employee, Tanya Bannerji (32) from Kolkata, was found dead under mysterious circumstances on the Hassan-Mangalore National Highway 48, about 180 km from Bangalore.

The police have picked up Tanya's colleague, Kishore Gururaj (26), who reportedly dropped her home on Tuesday night, for questioning. Tanya was employed as an accident claims analyst at Aviva. Her body, bearing multiple stab injuries, was found by the Sakleshpura police on Wednesday morning.

According to the police, Tanya completed her work at 9 pm yesterday. However, she did not take the office cab. She went with Gururaj in his car.

"He claims to have dropped her home around 10:30 pm. But we found that Tanya had sent an SMS to her roommate that she was leaving for Kolkata to celebrate her birthday. We suspect foul play and are questioning Kishore," the police stated.

"Whether she was molested or not can be established only after an autopsy. The autopsy report is awaited," the police said, adding that preliminary investigations are on.

In a joint statement, Aviva Offshore Services CEO Rajnish Virmani and 24/7 Customer COO S Nagarajan said: "This is a very shocking incident. We deeply empathise with the employee's family and are here to support them in their hour of grief. Aviva-24/7 is an extremely employee-friendly organisation and is deeply committed to ensuring complete employee safety and security."

They said the company employs several measures towards achieving the highest standards of safety. "It is very unfortunate that the employee did not opt for the company's transport outside working hours."

"While one could link this as a problem of the 'BPO industry', it is clearly a wider opportunity and area for us to work in collaboration with the local authorities to improve the safety standards in our cities. We are providing the authorities and investigators all the support in their investigation," Aviva added.