The murder of 41-year-old Prabha Arun Kumar, a Bengaluru-based IT professional in Australia has sent shock waves here in the Silicon Valley of India. Many IT professionals in Bengaluru feel the work pressure, nightshifts, and over time work at the foreign country has taken its toll. For them, working in a foreign country is not at all rosy as many think, but filled with full of thorns. Meghana, nine-year-old daughter of Prabha, who has not been informed of her mother’s death, still believes that her mother will comeback in the summer. When Prabha left for Australia on a project that was to finish in a year, her daughter was only six. But the project got extended, stretching Prabha’s stay in Sydney by two more years.
According to family sources, Prabha after working for almost eight years with the company got a chance to go abroad on a project. Prabha worked with three private firms before she got a job with Mindtree. G Jayachandra Kumar, Arun’s brother, said the trauma of listening to his wife getting attacked over phone and the long period before knowing what really had happened has taken a toll on Arun. Meanwhile, family sources confirmed that Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj was in touch with Arun Kumar and assured all help form the Union Government. Swaraj had tweeted earlier that she is in constant touch with India’s consulate in Sydney.
“I am pained to know about the murder of Prabha Arun Kumar in Sydney. Our Consulate is in touch with her Company there and we promise all help,” she posted on Twitter. Describing the attack on 41-year-old Prabha as a “sad event”, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said New South Wales Premier Mike Baird spoke with Sanjay Sudhir, consul general of India in Sydney, over the phone to convey his assurance. Prabha was attacked just 300 metres from her home and was talking to her husband when the attack took place.