Bengaluru: It was a tragic end to the inspirational life story of India's first female cab driver. Veerath Bharathi, who rode her city and dreams on wheels is dead, and the Bengaluru Police suspect she may have committed suicide out of depression and loneliness.
Questions are being raised from unlikely quarters on the reasons. As her LGBT community maintains silence, fingers are being pointed at a failed relationship that might have driven her to take the extreme step.
Neighbours found Bharathi's body hanging from the ceiling in her home in Nagashettyhalli around 7 PM on Monday.
Neighbours who alerted the cops said their suspicion grew when they saw her cab parked outside. Usually Bharathi leaves for work by 12 noon and is back only by late night, usually around 1 AM.
Police suspect it could be a case of suicide. There were no signs of a forceful break-in and no visible marks of assault on her body. There was not even a suicide note found.
"For a clearer picture we will wait till the post mortem report comes out," says DCP North district TR Suresh.
Her landlord however informed the police that Bharathi had been battling loneliness and depression. And that she had informed him that she was planning to shift to her native town. She was even trying to relocate her gas connection.
Her former colleagues at Sangama, where she worked for a brief period when she moved to Bengaluru and learned driving, informed on condition of anonymity that Bharathi suffered victimisation. And that could have led her to take such a drastic step.
In 2007, after moving to Bengaluru, she had started working for Sangama in different capacities. She later learnt driving, and with support from friends, she bought her first car, a Ford fiesta.
Bharathi was a female to male (transgender), and according to her friends and colleagues, she was in a relationship with a woman named Nimmi (Name changed). They were together for the past four years.
However there was some altercation between them and she recently left Bharathi for another partner. This infuriated her.
Bharathi was even physically assaulted once after which she decided to leave Bengaluru and move to her native place.
However, Nimmi allegedly assaulted her again - that too publicly. This time, there were many people from her community who claim they witnessed this incident. "That's what drove her to suicide," one of them says.
Bharathi had suffered several indignities because of her sexual identity, reveals her lawyer Bubbarjung Venkatesh.
All through her life she fought against it. Narrating a famous case he fought on her behalf and had managed to get an acquittal from a life sentence, Babbarjung says, It was a landmark case. For the first time a lesbian was implicated in a case of murder and Bharathi was the prime accused."
It was in 2006, and Bharathi and two of her friends were in Ooty on a vacation.
"It was a suicide pact. Unable to bear the harassment because of their sexual identity, the three people had decided to end their life," Venkatesh says
However, one of the three girls developed cold feet and opted out. Bharathi and the other girl went ahead with the pact. Bharathi survived, but the other girl didn't.
The dead girl's family filed a case and Bharathi and her friend were charged with murder. Bharathi even spent four to five months in Coimbatore jail and was finally acquitted in 2008.
"Six days back she had called me saying she wanted some legal assistance. She wanted to adopt a child. She said she was also very depressed. But didn't specify the reasons," Venkatesh says.
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