The family members of Infosys employee Neelima who so far were alleging foul play in the incident, have approached Cyberabad police commissioner Ch Dwaraka Tirumala Rao requesting that the investigation into the death be stopped. They now believe that Neelima did indeed commit suicide.
The Cyberabad police said Neelima’s husband Suresh Reddy and other family members had informed them that she had given a clean chit to B Prashanth, a Cognizant employee and her friend, in an email sent to her husband. She also informed him that she needed to pay 500 (currency not mentioned in the message but police presume it to be US dollars) as rent to someone in the US and 4,000 (currency not mentioned) to Prashanth.
“Suresh said he knew Neelima had a friend by name Prashanth. In the last one-and-half years, Suresh on one occasion went to the US to meet Neelima and celebrate her birthday. It was on this occasion that Neelima had introduced him to Prashanth along with several other friends. However, Suresh said he was unaware of any more details about him,” the Raidurgam police said. After cracking the email password and collecting the call detail record (CDR) of Neelima’s cellphone, the Cyberabad police found several mails sent to Prashanth besides the lone mail to Suresh in the last few minutes before her death. “Seconds before Neelima’s death she had sent an SMS to Suresh. When Suresh was questioned about it, he told us that his message box was full and hence the SMS might have not been delivered,” an official said. After unlocking the phone of Neelima, police found that she had deleted all SMSes from her phone.
In the email sent to Suresh, which according to police he checked only after her funeral, Neelima had informed him about the payments she was supposed to make and to whom her gold and flat in Chandanagar was to be given. “It was not a will, she only briefly explained that benefits given by the company like provident fund, insurance should go to certain persons. As a result, the family members requested police to stop the investigation since they no longer have any doubts about her death being a case of homicide,” officials said.
With the available information, police have come to a conclusion that Neelima went to Infosys with a determination to die. They are now gathering information on the reasons behind her death. Since Prashanth was a former employee of Infosys, police are ascertaining whether Neelima and Prashanth knew each other from the days he worked at the IT major or they became friends only after they moved to the US. Police are also trying to find details from Neelima’s laptop.
