Murder renews attention to women's safety

BANGALORE: NASSCOM today urged BPO firms to ensure the safety of its female employees following the alleged rape and murder of a 24-year-old HP employee here early on Tuesday morning.

The IT industry association asked BPO firms to ensure that women employees were not the last to be dropped home as a standard practice.

Describing the incident as "very unfortunate and sad" and a "matter of concern", NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said, "We would like to create further such best practices or anything else we can do to make sure our people are safe and secure in general," he said.

The association would continue dialogue with the police for creating a "conducive" law and order situation and improving the industry's internal system for safety and security, particularly for women.

"We also need to look into what are the lessons that we have to learn from this (incident)," Karnik said, on the sidelines of NASSCOM's "India Strategy Summit 2005", where the findings of the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2005 on the IT and BPO industries was released.

Driver Held

Meanwhile, the Bangalore police said they had arrested one Shiv Kumar, a taxi driver, who reportedly confessed to the crime.

The accused, on the pretext of ferrying her to work from home, took her to an isolated place and sexually assaulted her around 3 am on Tuesday.

Kumar slit her throat in panic when she tried to contact her office on her mobile and dumped the body in a pit near Anjanapura layout, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Alok Kumar told reporters.

The murder was discovered when she failed to return home. The victim had married a software professional eight months ago.

Unauthorised Driver

Meanwhile, HP expressed shock at the incident and claimed that the driver was "unauthorised"' and had impersonated the regular shift driver. The IT firm also announced increased security measures.

In a statement, Amit Sircar of HP Global Delivery Application Services' Communications and Customer Operations condemned the crime and described it as an "extremely unfortunate and tragic incident."

An internal HP communication also referred to the driver as unauthorised. It said, “The initial investigation information received reveals that she was a victim of impersonation by a cab driver who assaulted and killed her.”

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