BANGALORE: A colleague of Pratibha who exercised caution on receiving a call from an anonymous person revealed how she escaped from being trapped.

Anonymous call

Lata B. on Saturday narrated before a Fast Track Sessions Court hearing the Pratibha murder case the way she handled the anonymous call.

She was one of the two colleagues of Pratibha who received an anonymous call before Pratibha.

On December 12, 2005 Ms. Lata's mobile phone rang between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Identifying himself as the driver of route No. 405, the caller said he had been asked to pick her up from her home. Ms. Lata was on night shift.

She asked the caller to name the others who were to be picked up.

"He said he did not know."

Suspecting the bona fides of the caller, she asked for his mobile number.

The caller said that he was calling from his mobile phone.

"But I found the call to have been made from a PCO," Ms. Lata said.

She then called the transport desk of Hewlett Packard, "which usually informs about any change in the monthly pick-up schedule given to employees on the first day of the month."

Request

On enquiry, the transport desk informed her that no vehicle had been allotted to pick her up as she was proceeding on a week's leave from December 13, 2005.

"I asked the help desk to arrange for a vehicle. The desk then sent the vehicle that usually picks me up. A few of my colleagues and I went for work in that vehicle on December 12," she pointed out.

The next day, Pavan Shetty, husband of Prathiba, called Ms. Lata in the evening to say that his wife had not returned home.

"I informed him that I was on leave and had no news of her," she said.

A few days later, she heard about Pratibha's murder, Ms. Lata added.

Judge K. Sukanya will record further evidence of Pratibha's sister-in-law S. Shantala on Monday.

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