'He stabbed me, darling': Sydney IT techie victim's last words to her husband

Bengaluru: The 41-year-old Indian IT consultant Prabha Arun Kumar, who was brutally stabbed to death in Australia, just 300m from her home, was on the phone talking to her husband in India when the incident happened, a family member said. The incident happened yesterday, in Westmead, a suburb in Sydney, while she was in the lane way that runs through the park close to her home. “He stabbed me, darling,” she told husband Arun Kumar, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph reported, as the conversation abruptly ended [caption id=“attachment_2142511” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] The woman was found by a by-passer shortly afterwards and rushed to hospital but she had lost too much blood and doctors were unable to save her. She had been just 300 metres from home. “It is a horrific attack without any stretch of the imagination,” police Superintendent Wayne Cox said. Kumar’s husband flew to Australia from India, where both he and their nine-year-old daughter live, after the attack but reportedly arrived to be told that his wife had died. The dead woman’s flatmate said Kumar had probably not wanted to bother anyone to ask for a lift home after finishing work late and arriving at Parramatta train station at 9pm. Instead she decided to walk, and was attacked near a tree-lined walkway. Police have established a task force to investigate the murder but no arrests have so far been made. He said “around 6:30 or so in the evening we received a call by some one from her office side stating that she was out of danger, but later in the evening we were informed by her brother Shankar, who lives in Perth, that she was no more.” “My uncle left for Australia by 12:20 am flight alone, as he was only person with relevant visa in the family. Their 9-year-old daughter is with us, unaware of what has happened to her mother,” he said, adding that “we were expecting Aunty back home in the first week of April.” According to an Indian Express report, Kumar was staying with a colleague in Sydney and the family had called her roommate who then found her. Jayachandra told the newspaper that Kumar had been heard telling the attacker to take her belongings and she reporedly had stab marks on her abdomen and throat. Jayachandra said, “We have got the information in the morning that the postmortem is going on, and we have also been told that tomorrow morning the appointment is taken for my uncle and my aunt’s brother Shankar who is in Australia for going to the hospital and seeing her (Prabha) body.” Meanwhile, Prabha’s employer Mindtree in a statement has called the incident extremely “unfortunate” and “shocking”. “Our prayers are with the family of the deceased. We are working with the officials of both the countries to help the family to bring the body back to India. We are providing all the necessary support to authorities investigating the case,” it said. A spate of violent crimes against Indian students in Australia in 2010, including the stabbing murder of 21-year-old Punjab man Nitin Garg as he walked to work at a fast-food restaurant in Melbourne, heightened tensions between Australia and India. But since then the number of tourists visiting from India has picked up, and India’s charismatic leader Narendra Modi has described warmer relations between the nations as “natural” during a 2014 visit. With inputs from PTI and AFP