Husband's harassment drove Infy manager Smitha Rao to death?

Bangalore, Nov 29: With the Tech city of Bangalore witnessing yet another techie death, the recent victim is an Infosys assistant manager and former woman journalist Smitha Rao, who hanged herself to death. 32-year-old Smitha committed suicide on Monday at her flat in Mantri Splendour apartments at Geddelihalli, Bangalore.

With the mystery regarding her death gaining momentum, there are reports that suggest she was being harassed by her husband, Rohit. Rohit is a software engineer with the popular search engine firm Google. The information was revealed by police officials.

Hennur police inspector G. Prabhakar has been quoted as saying to agencies, "We have registered a harassment case against Rohit under sections 498A and 304B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and are investigating to ascertain what actually forced his wife Smita to commit suicide by hanging in her flat."

The needle of suspicion is pointed towards her husband following complaints to the police by Smitha's parents. The parents had alleged that Smitha was mentally and physically harassed by her husband since their marriage 4 years ago. They had no children.

Prabhakar added, "As Rohit is cooperating with us in the investigation, we have not arrested him yet but directed him to report to the police station on Tuesday for further interrogation on the basis of the complaint made by Smita's parents against him. Though Rohit confessed during preliminary investigation that all was not well between the couple and they frequently quarreled over many issues, her parents accused him of ill-treating her and causing a lot of mental agony, which finally drove her to hang."

Smitha was rushed to hospital immediately after she was found hanging but was declared brought dead. She was taken to the Columbia Asia hospital. Columbia hospital general manager Jermy D'Souza commented that Smitha was brought to hospital in an ambulance from her flat. The doctors could not do anything much since she was already dead by the time she was wheeled into the emergency ward.

D'Souza added, "On receiving an emergency call from Mantri apartments at Geddelihalli, we rushed an ambulance to bring the victim at the earliest. Before our doctors could attend to her, she was found dead by then."

Police have registered a case of unnatural death. The postmortem report is yet to be submitted by the Columbia hospital till late Monday. The police have meanwhile collected a laptop and two mobile handsets from her flat for the purpose of investigation.

Before joining Infosys in June 2010, Smitha worked as a journalist and have served as deputy city editor at 'Bangalore Mirror' and a senior correspondent with 'The Times of India', Bangalore edition. She has also had short stints at News 9, an English channel of the TV9 group as a television reporter.

Infosys refused to comment on Smitha's death.

OneIndia News