Nightmare for cab owner too

BANGALORE: The Tata Sumo parked in front of the house could be just any other car. But whenever its owner R C Renukappa looks at it, there’s a flash of pain, anger and shock in his eyes. He bought this vehicle in the fond hope of making a fortune in the IT city. It only drove him despair. For, this was the vehicle which ferried BPO employee Pratibha Srikanth Murthy on the fateful night of December 13, 2005 when she was raped and murdered.
For Renukappa, a resident of Raghuvanhalli on the Kanakapura Main Road, this Sumo was the first vehicle he’d bought and through a private travel agency, BPO firms hired it. Little did this 60-plus man know his vehicle would be used to commit the horrific crime. Four years on, just like Pratibha’s mother Gowramma agonises over losing her only child, Renukappa and his wife Chennabasavamma are also silent sufferers.
After the murder, he went through tremendous stress and even now hesitantly talks about it. Shivakumar, the accused in the murder case, worked as a cab driver and stayed in Ganigepalya with his wife. When Renukappa bought the Sumo, he looked for a driver and came to know about Shivakumar.
“Not only did I hire him as my driver, I also gave him one of my houses on rent. He was almost like a family member,’’ he told STOI. Channabasavamma is still furious: “I treated them like family. His wife was a few months pregnant at that time and I used to take her regularly to hospital.’’
But the couple who have two sons didn’t know what was in store for them just four months after their new vehicle was on the road. Remembering that night, Renukappa says “I was asleep in my house and around midnight, the police came home and asked me to come with them. I went to the police station, only to see him being arrested. It was an absolute shock for me. During that painful period, my younger brother, who stayed next door, passed away. Even today, I can’t think about it.’’ He spent all the money he’d been saving to buy another vehicle. “I would have had five of those by now,’’ he sighs.