Tattoo helps solve Kolkata model’s murder: Bengaluru Ola cabbie killed her

Tattoo helps solve Kolkata model’s murder: Bengaluru Ola cabbie killed her
Pooja Dey had booked the cab on Ola and the driver Nagesh
By Pragna L Krupa

Kolkata woman had come to city for a day; while returning to airport Ola cabbie killed her


On August 1, a man passing by an isolated road near the back gate of Bengaluru airport saw the body of a woman, covered in blood. The woman had been stabbed multiple times and her head had been smashed in.

The Bagalur police was informed, and they rushed to the spot. There was not much to identify the woman by, except a tattoo on the side of her neck and what she was wearing.

Meanwhile somewhere in Kolkata, an anxious husband was awaiting the return of his wife, who had gone to Bengaluru for a day.
The police team cracked the case and found something chilling: The woman had been murdered by an Ola cab driver, as she was travelling to the airport in the cab. And the driver had carried out this brutal murder in order to rob the woman.

The tattoo that helped identify her

The tattoo that helped identify her



HM Nagesh, 22, the driver, police say, lives with his old father and two brothers in a rented house in Hegganahalli. He had been waiting for a good opportunity to rob someone, when, the woman, now identified as Pooja Singh Dey, took his cab to the airport. Nagesh took the cab to the isolated spot, stabbed her, smashed her head with a hollow block and escaped with her valuables.

Dey was a model-cum-freelance event manager and had come to the city on July 30. She and her husband Saudeep Dey live in Kolkata. The couple had no children. Police said that Dey had stayed at a hotel on Hosur Road and after finishing her work in the city, She booked an Ola cab to the hotel where she stayed and later requested him to drop her to the airport without using the Ola platform.

Nagesh went to the spot and picked her up. He followed the map till McDonald’s on Airport Road and then took a U-turn towards Shettykere. He took her to a deserted place where there were no CCTV cameras and stabbed her multiple times. When Pooja tried resisting and ran out of the cab, the accused pinned her down and smashed her head with a hollow block before fleeing from the spot.

The tattoo

The two special teams to investigate the case had only two things to go by: Her clothes, and the tattoo on the back of her neck. One team was assigned to look into the bar codes of the clothes she was wearing along with a Titan watch and a finger ring. The second team was sent to New Delhi and West Bengal to verify with the missing complaints at the local police stations as she looked like she could be from those parts. The team that had gone to West Bengal learnt about a missing complaint, which matched her description, in Kolkata New Town police station. The team got in touch with the family members who came to the city to identify the body. Her husband, Saudeep identified her after verifying the tattoo on her neck and the ring that was given by her friend. The police who were verifying her emails, came across the Ola mail which confirmed her ride with Ola to the hotel. They picked up the driver for questioning during which, they recovered one of her mobile phones in his cab. During interrogation, Nagesh confessed to the crime.


Premeditated murder

A senior officer said that Nagesh’s brother had bought him the car on loan and they had difficulty in repaying it. Nagesh hatched the plan to rob someone in order to clear the loan. He had bought a knife a month ago and was waiting for the right victim to cross his path. When he found a lone woman travelling in the late night towards the airport, he decided to kill and rob her. “We did not recover cash from him and are still investigating how much money he stole from the victim,” the officer said.


Lapse?

The Kolkata police is said to have not taken the missing complaint seriously and had taken up the case as Non Cognizable Report (NCR). Though her husband had mentioned that she had gone missing from the time she visited Bengaluru, the Kolkata police did not inform the city police while they were checking initially with the control room.

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