Solving Crime: The 2005 rape-murder that shook India before Nirbhaya, ushered in crucial policies on working women’s safety

Learning from her mother’s independence

The only daughter of her parents, the victim was born in 1977 but lost her father to a stove burst a few days later. As a single parent, her mother toiled hard to make ends meet and provide her daughter with a good education. In fact, her mother stood strong as a pillar, helping the young woman blossom.

Months before the victim was murdered, she married another BPO employee and soon joined the IT firm. Like many women at the time, she began to work night shifts as her office had provided a pick-up and drop facility.

The fateful night

On December 13, 2005, she left for work as usual and was the first person to be picked up by the cab. Around 2 am, she got into Shiva Kumar’s cab but unbeknownst to her, the driver had other plans. He drove to an isolated place in an up-and-coming area at the time and took advantage of her before slitting the woman’s throat and dumping her body near an open drain.

Hours later, on realising that her daughter was missing, the woman’s mother approached the police and filed a complaint. It did not take long for the police to determine that it was Shiva Kumar who picked her up on the fateful night. In fact, Jagadish, another cab driver, was on pick-up duty that night, but Shiva Kumar called the victim from his phone and informed that he would be coming instead.

The police lay out a trap

Surprising the investigators, Shiva Kumar did not attempt to escape once news of the rape-murder broke out. For two days, he tracked the news closely and also began to skip work. Interestingly, the officers proceeded in such a manner that Kumar had no clue he was the prime suspect in the case. When he was finally questioned, the cab driver denied his role in the crime.

Speaking to The Indian Express, retired superintendent of police S K Umesh, who was with the Central Crime Branch (CCB) at the time, recalls how the case turned when they brought Shiva Kumar to the CCB office. The then police inspector Devaiah and assistant commissioner of police K V K Reddy had picked up Kumar based on their suspicions, but his denial flummoxed them. He stuck to the stand that he had not picked up the victim on the day she died.

“The moment he was brought to the CCB office, we took him inside a room. There were around 4-5 police officers with me. All I said was, ‘We are very clear that you committed the crime. If you confess, we will help you in some way, or else be prepared to die.’ That was it, in the next five minutes, he narrated the entire incident,” Umesh recounts.

“Kumar later took us to the location where he had dumped the body. I got into the drain and saw that the body was bloated with drain water. It was already three days old and decomposed,” he explains.

Umesh adds, “During the probe, it was revealed that the woman sat next to him and he threatened her at knife point. She tried to escape but he did not allow it. When he took her to the isolated spot, a police patrol vehicle had taken that route, but they thought that it was just a parked car and left. At the time, Kumar had held his hand over the victim’s mouth. Had the officers heard her voice or scream, she could have been saved. Later, Kumar raped her and slit her throat.”

Public outrage and policies

Bengaluru, which was at the time making a name for itself as the nation’s IT capital, was fast becoming a home for job aspirants, especially in the information technology sector. As news of the rape-murder broke out, it shocked many such hopefuls, especially women.

The following weeks saw vociferous protests across the country demanding action from the government. The then chief minister N Dharam Singh’s cabinet subsequently introduced policies focusing on women’s safety and also issued guidelines to IT companies. Background checks were made mandatory for drivers employed by IT firms. The incident also saw a number of companies bringing in safety measures for women employees on night shifts, including the deployment of security guards and the use of GPS systems in cabs.

Five years later, the verdict

Though the police filed the chargesheet within the stipulated time, the government also insisted on a fast-track court to hear the case. While the victim’s mother fought almost single-handedly to ensure justice in the case, the verdict came after five daunting years during which the police registered 80 witness statements that stood as strong evidence, besides scientific proof. On October 6, 2010, the court ordered imprisonment till death for Shiva Kumar, besides 10 years each for rape and kidnap.

Kumar, who was never granted bail, approached the Karnataka High Court against the conviction ordered by the fast-track court, but in 2016 the state’s top court dismissed his appeal and upheld the lower court order. With this, Shiva Kumar became the first person to be convicted by a Karnataka court to serve his entire life in prison without any chance of parole.

To this day, Umesh gets furious when Shiva Kumar’s name is taken – with good reason too. “I asked him why he did it. Kumar said his wife had gone back to her mother’s home after a fight and he desperately wanted to have sex, so he did it. He should have been hanged but now he is fit and healthy eating prison food,” he says.

Kumar has been lodged at Parappana Agrahara Central Prison in Bengaluru since 2005.