Bangalore: Infosys' assistant manager and former woman journalist Smita Rao, 32, hanged herself at her home Monday due to alleged harassment by her husband Rohit, a software engineer working with the popular web search engine firm Google in this tech hub, a police official said.
"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," Hennur police inspector G Prabhakar said late Monday.
The case was registered after Smita's parents complained to the police that their daughter was mentally and physically harassed by her husband since they were married over four years ago (2007) in the city.
"As Rohit is cooperating with us in the investigation, we have not arrested him yet but directed him to report to the police station Tuesday for further interrogation on the basis of the complaint made by Smita's parents against him," Prabhakar said.
The couple had no children.
Smita, who was found hanging around noon in her flat (E4) on the third floor of Mantri Splendour apartments, was rushed to a private hospital but was declared brought dead by doctors.
Police initially registered a case of unnatural death by hanging pending the post-mortem report, which was not submitted by the Columbia Asia hospital till late Monday.
As part of investigation, police collected a laptop and two mobile handsets used by Smita from her flat.
"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," Prabhakar pointed out.
According to Columbia hospital general manager Jermy D'Souza, Smita was brought to the hospital in an ambulance from the flat but could not be treated as doctors found her dead when she was wheeled into the emergency ward.
"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," D'Souza said.
Smita joined the IT bellwether in June 2010 and was handling online content for the company's website, providing corporate updates and writing business stories and features.
Infosys, however, did not respond to calls and none of its officials was available to comment on the tragic incident involving one of its senior employees.
Before shifting to the corporate world, Smita was deputy city editor at 'Bangalore Mirror', a popular tabloid in this tech hub, from July 2007 to September 2008 and a senior correspondent with 'The Times of India', Bangalore edition, from February 2004 to April 2007.
Smita also went to Milano in Italy on a teaching fellowship for 10 months from October 2008 to July 2009.
On return to Bangalore, she worked as a television reporter with News 9, an English channel of the TV9 group for nearly a year before joining the global software major.
IANS
First Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 09:01