Infosys techie murdered on Pune campus, security guard arrested

Police arrested a security guard on Monday in connection with the murder of a 25-year-old Infosys engineer, who was found strangled with a computer cable at her workplace a day before.

Police teams picked up Bhaben Saikia -- a 26-year-old native from Assam working as a watchman at the Pune Infosys campus -- from Mumbai early on Monday.

“He is currently being brought to Pune,” senior police inspector Arun Waikar told HT.

Read: Dealing with rape and murder on India’s IT campuses

The victim, Rasila Raju OP, was found dead late on Sunday evening on the ninth floor of Infosys’ facility in phase II of the Hinjewadi IT park near Pune.

Saikia worked with a private security firm and was deputed at Infosys six months ago, police said. A background check at the time of appointment had shown no previous record of crime.

“We are deeply saddened & shocked by the tragedy at Pune DC. Our hearts go out to our colleague’s family in this time of grief,” the tech giant tweeted on Monday.

Police said they were working on some crucial leads and were confident of cracking the case after scanning through CCTV footage.

The police said Infosys officials told them Rasila had the day off on Sunday, but had come in to work on a project and was in touch with colleagues at the company’s Bengaluru office.

But when her supervisor in Bangalore could not get through to her over phone late on Sunday, someone in the Hinjewadi office was asked to check on her.

“When her colleagues came to her workstation, they found her lying on the floor with a computer wire around her neck,” said assistant police commissioner, Vaishali Jadhav. The techie was hit hard on the face before being strangled, said another official.

Police said the post-mortem had been postponed on the request of victim’s family, who hailed from Kerala and were on their way to Pune. “We will carry out post mortem once Rasila’s family reaches here,” said another official attached with Hinjewadi police station.

According to senior police officials, Rasila had come to office at around 3pm. “Around 10pm, we received call from Infosys about her body lying on the floor near her work station,” said Jadhav.

This is the second murder of a woman techie in Pune in the last two months. In December, Antara Das, 23-year-old techie from Kolkata working with Capgemini near Pune, was stabbed to death while returning from work late in the evening.