Sydney: An Indian IT professional was stabbed to death in Sydney on Saturday night.
“He stabbed me, darling,” Prabha Arun Kumar reportedly told her husband over phone just soon after she was attacked. Her husband Arun Kumar lives in Bangalore with their nine-year-old daughter.
By the time Prabha was found by a passer-by and taken to hospital, the 41-year-old woman had lost too much blood and doctors were unable to save her.
The police have leased CCTV footage of Prabha on a walkway in Sydney’s Parramatta Park moments before she was stabbed. She had taken a shortcut home through the park at around 9:30 pm.
“There is nothing to suggest any racial angle to the murder,” Indian Consul General Sanjay Sudhir told NDTV on Monday. ”
Robbery has also been ruled out; her mobile phone is missing but her ornaments were intact, say relatives.
Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has tweeted that she is in constant touch with the Indian Consulate in Sydney.
Prabha’s husband reached Sydney on Sunday. Prabha, who was on work visa, was to return to India in April.
“We just want to know why she was attacked,” her nephew Thrijesh Jayachandra told NDTV, describing her as “daring and beautiful.”
Kumar’s flatmate in Sydney, Sarada, was quoted as saying that she had repeatedly warned her friend not to walk through the park after dark.
“She worked late regularly so felt bad to ask for a lift. I told her that it is not a safe way to come through because there are people who stop and ask you for money, like $2,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
A series of attacks on Indians in Australia in 2010 had led to tension between the two countries. But since then, the number of Indian visitors there has increased.