Sydney/New Delhi (PTI): Australia today assured India that the perpetrators of the fatal knife attack on an Indian woman IT professional in a Sydney suburb will be brought to justice and a special detective squad has been assigned to probe the “brutal and cowardly” assault.
The assurance to probe the attack on 41-year-old Prabha Arun Kumar with utmost seriousness was given by New South Wales (NSW) Premier Mike Baird during a telephonic conversation with Sanjay Sudhir, Consul General of India in Sydney.
The NSW police has launched a probe following the stabbing of Prabha, who was on the phone with her husband in India, when the attack happened on Saturday in Westmead.
Sudhir, the victim’s husband Arun Kumar, and a representative of her employer Mindtree, an IT firm, had a meeting with the NSW police during which they were informed about a special detective squad being formed to probe the attack, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said in New Delhi.
The detective squad — Strike Force Marcoala — which comprises of police from Parramatta Local Area Command and State Crime Command’s Homicide Squad has been formed to investigate the death.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said she was pained to know about the murder and that she was in constant touch with India’s Consulate in Sydney which is providing all help.
“I am pained to know abt murder of Prabha Arun Kumar in Sydney. Our Consulate is in touch with her Company there and we promise all help,” she tweeted.
“I am in constant touch with our Consulate in Sydney. The Consulate is providing all help. I have just spoken to Mr Arun Kumar, husband of the victim. He is satisfied with the assistance from the Consulate,” she said.
NSW Premier Baird condemned the assault and expressed confidence that the police will bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice.
“I was shocked and horrified to hear about the attack on Prabha Arun Kumar and my thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends at this devastating time. I was particularly saddened to hear about the attack, which took place on Saturday just hours after I had joined the Indian community to celebrate Holi, the ancient Hindu festival of colours at Parramatta,” Baird said.
“This was a brutal and cowardly attack on a member of the public that is now being investigated by a dedicated team of police officers and detectives. I have every confidence that Strike Force Marcoala will use every resource available to help bring the perpetrators of this horrific crime to justice,” he said.
Consul General of India in Sydney, Sudhir, said, “The investigation has just begun. What they have done is that they have engaged the most specialised agencies who carry out such investigations and that investigation is underway.”
“The sense I got from the investigation team is they are putting in their best. They are regarding this investigation as ‘a high-profile investigation’. So they are putting in as much specialisation as they have on this issue,” he told a TV channel.
“I have spoken to a lot of people, a lot a agencies and there is no evidence which I have seen which indicates any racial undertones to this attack. Prabha’s husband happened to be the last person she spoke to becasue as that time she was talking to him on mobile,” Sudhir said.
Prabha’s distraught husband Arun and her 9-year-old daughter had reached Australia from Bangalore to formally identify her body.
The Consul General said Arun had completed his statement to police.
“It was a very elaborate statement which went on for more than couple of hours. And what I noticed from both the investigating agency and Arun was that they are trying to help each other. Arun is trying to give whatever statement he can, as elaborate as possible, to give the investigation,” he said.
Australian police today released the CCTV footage of Prabha walking from the Parramatta train station just before she was fatally stabbed and appealed to people for information to crack the baffling case.
Police said the emergency services responded to reports of a seriously injured woman on a public walkway between Argyle Street, Parramatta, and Amos Street, Westmead, at around 9:30pm (local time) on Saturday.
Ambulance Paramedics treated the woman at the scene before transporting her to Westmead Hospital, where she died at about 12:45 am yesterday.
Confirming her identity, the police statement said, it was believed that Prabha got off a train at Parramatta Railway Station about 9pm, before walking along Argyle Street and turning left onto the walkway. Police believe she was attacked while on the walkway.
She sustained a number of injuries, which it is believed were inflicted by a sharp-edged weapon.
“We are hoping this will jog the memory of anyone who was in the vicinity of Argyle Street, Park Parade or Amos Street that evening, and encourage them to come forward and speak with police,” Homicide Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Michael Willing, said.
Police said there was nothing to suggest that Kumar’s murder was racially motivated.
“Could this be a random attack? Well, yes it could. It could be a whole range of scenarios… and we are considering all of them,” Willing said.
Prabha had reportedly been working a double shift the day of her death.
Prabha’s husband was on the phone with her when she was brutally stabbed in the park, ‘the Daily Telegraph’ reported.
“She was talking with her husband Arun Kumar in India when she said ‘he stabbed me, darling’ before the line went dead,” the report said.
NSW Premier Baird and Minister for Communities and Citizenship Victor Dominello in a joint official statement reassured the Indian community living in Australia of every effort to probe the fatal attack.
The statement said that the state government sought to reassure the Indian community that every effort was being made to investigate the fatal attack on an Indian woman at Westmead and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Bengaluru: ‘He stabbed me, darling’: Sydney IT techie victim’s last words to her husband
Bengaluru: The 41-year-old Indian IT consultant Prabha Arun Kumar, who was brutally stabbed to death in Australia, just 300m from her home, was on the phone talking to her husband in India when the incident happened, a family member said.
The incident happened yesterday, in Westmead, a suburb in Sydney, while she was in the lane way that runs through the park close to her home.
“He stabbed me, darling,” she told husband Arun Kumar, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph reported, as the conversation abruptly ended
The woman was found by a by-passer shortly afterwards and rushed to hospital but she had lost too much blood and doctors were unable to save her. She had been just 300 metres from home.
“It is a horrific attack without any stretch of the imagination,” police Superintendent Wayne Cox said.
Kumar’s husband flew to Australia from India, where both he and their nine-year-old daughter live, after the attack but reportedly arrived to be told that his wife had died.
The dead woman’s flatmate said Kumar had probably not wanted to bother anyone to ask for a lift home after finishing work late and arriving at Parramatta train station at 9pm.
Instead she decided to walk, and was attacked near a tree-lined walkway.
Police have established a task force to investigate the murder but no arrests have so far been made.
He said “around 6:30 or so in the evening we received a call by some one from her office side stating that she was out of danger, but later in the evening we were informed by her brother Shankar, who lives in Perth, that she was no more.”
“My uncle left for Australia by 12:20 am flight alone, as he was only person with relevant visa in the family. Their 9-year-old daughter is with us, unaware of what has happened to her mother,” he said, adding that “we were expecting Aunty back home in the first week of April.”
According to an Indian Express report, Kumar was staying with a colleague in Sydney and the family had called her roommate who then found her.
Jayachandra told the newspaper that Kumar had been heard telling the attacker to take her belongings and she reporedly had stab marks on her abdomen and throat.
Jayachandra said, “We have got the information in the morning that the postmortem is going on, and we have also been told that tomorrow morning the appointment is taken for my uncle and my aunt’s brother Shankar who is in Australia for going to the hospital and seeing her (Prabha) body.”
Meanwhile, Prabha’s employer Mindtree in a statement has called the incident extremely “unfortunate” and “shocking”.
“Our prayers are with the family of the deceased. We are working with the officials of both the countries to help the family to bring the body back to India. We are providing all the necessary support to authorities investigating the case,” it said.
A spate of violent crimes against Indian students in Australia in 2010, including the stabbing murder of 21-year-old Punjab man Nitin Garg as he walked to work at a fast-food restaurant in Melbourne, heightened tensions between Australia and India.
But since then the number of tourists visiting from India has picked up, and India’s charismatic leader Narendra Modi has described warmer relations between the nations as “natural” during a 2014 visit.
With inputs from PTI and AFP
Police release CCTV footage of slain Indian woman in Sydney
Sydney, March 9 (IANS) Police on Monday released CCTV footage of the Indian IT consultant minutes before she was stabbed to death in a park on Saturday, just metres away from her home in Sydney’s Westmead suburb, a media report said.
The footage show Prabha Arun Kumar, 41, on phone on a well-lit concourse near Parramatta railway station before she took a shortcut through a nearby dimly-lit park where she was attacked and killed, The Sydney Morning Herald reported, adding that police could not find anyone following her or acting suspiciously nearby.
“We are at a loss at this point in time,” Detective Superintendent Michael Willing was quoted as saying. He, however, added that there was no reason to suggest it was a race-related attack.
Police said they released CCTV footage of Prabha in the hope that it would jog the memory of anyone who saw her on Saturday night before she was murdered. An employee of the Bengaluru-based tech firm MindTree, she was returning home after finishing a double shift.
Officers also spent the day asking residents of Westmead if they had ever seen suspicious activity in the park.
Meanwhile, the victim’s husband G. Arun Kumar arrived in Sydney from Bengaluru on Monday morning and was assisting police in their investigation.
She was on the phone with her husband Arun Kumar, who lives in Bengaluru with their 10-year-old daughter, when she was stabbed.
Chillingly, the husband heard her tell him that a suspicious-looking man was following her before she started pleading with her attacker not to harm her. “I think I’ve been stabbed”, she told her husband as she collapsed in a pool of blood. The phone line then went dead. “It was a terrible call to receive,” Willing said.
Mangaluru: Hindus urge PM Abbott to restore confidence among Indo-Australians after techie’s murder
Press Release
Nevada, USA: Hindus have urged Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to restore confidence among the Australians of India descent who were shocked at 41-year old mother Prabha Arun Kumar’s alleged brutal murder on March seven evening in a Sydney suburb.
Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that Abbott should immediately go to Sydney area to meet Kumar’s family-friends-colleagues in particular and Indo-Australian community in general, assuring them of new measures for the added security of the community and fast and transparent investigation into this alleged murder.
Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, pointed out that Indo-Australians had made lot of contributions to the nation and society in Australia and they should feel secure while walking back home after work/school. This appalling incident had disturbed the hard-working, harmonious and peace-loving Indo-Australian community, Zed added.
Rajan Zed stressed that Australia should take the safety and security of Indo-Australians seriously and come up with strong measures for the future, including creating a national task force to develop strategies to prevent such incidents from happening.
Earlier news:
- Bantwal: Prabha’s Killing in Oz – Family in Native Village of Amtoor in Shock and Sorrow
- Melbourne: Bengaluru Woman Stabbed to Death in Australia