Prabha Arun Kumar, the Mindtree software engineer who was robbed and fatally stabbed by an unidentified man in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday, had escaped death by a whisker when she met with a road accident in Bengaluru way back in 2005.
Prabha, 41, almost died when a motorcycle hit her in Prashanth Nagar. She suffered grievous injuries and was hospitalised. She remained in coma for three months and recovered. But she lost sense of smell, her nephew, Thrijesh, said. After the accident, Prabha and her husband, G Arun Kumar, decided to have a child. Prabha bore a baby girl.
But this time, she wasn’t as lucky. “My aunt was a bit unlucky in her life as she had almost died in a tragic incident some time back,” Thrijesh, a civil contractor, told Deccan Herald.
A native of Nandagokula in Amtoor near Kalladka in Bantwal taluk, Prabha was the daughter of Mahabala Shetty. She has three brothers and two sisters. After graduation, Prabha joined Softlinks, an IT firm which Mindtree acquired later. Prabha had come to Bengaluru six months ago and returned after two months.
As Prabha was talking to her husband over phone when the attack took place and had narrated the incident to him, Kumar immediately flew out to Sydney. That he was the only person in the family to have an Australian visa helped.
Thrijesh said the response from Mindtree, the Ministry of External Affairs, the Australian High Commission in India and the Indian High Commission in Australia had been encouraging.
They are in constant touch with the family members in Bengaluru, sharing and exchanging latest information.
Prabha’s two sisters and three brothers, who live in different cities, rushed to Bengaluru on Sunday night.