India's first female Uber driver found dead in Bengaluru

V Bharati, 39, was found hanging in her house

An Indian woman, dubbed as Bengaluru’s first woman cab driver, was found hanging from the ceiling of a room at her house in a suspected case of suicide.

V Bharati, 39, was found dead in her rented house in Bengaluru’s Nagashetty Halli area on Monday evening.

“Around 7:15pm, her neighbours informed me that she has hanged herself. Her room was not locked. We informed the police immediately,” The Hindustan Times quoted her landlord Shankar Singh as saying.



The landlord further claimed that the woman had been in a state of depression since the last few days. “A couple of days ago, she told me that she was frustrated being single… Otherwise, she had no financial problems and was paying a rent of INR6,500.”

According to Singh, Bharati had told him that she wanted to move back to her hometown of Singarayakonda in Andhra Pradesh’s Prakasam district and there were hardly any visitors for her.

“She rented my house eight months ago. Since then, she has been staying alone and there were no visitors for her in the recent past,” he said.

Bharati came to Bengaluru, the capital of India's southern Karnataka state, in 2005. She has a sister Sarala, who was the only person she stayed in touch with. When contacted, Sarala was not in a position to speak as she was travelling. “I am on my way to Bengaluru,” she said.

Before becoming a cab driver, Bharati had worked with an NGO Sangama in Bengaluru.

NGO head, Manohar Elavarthi, said Bharati was a quiet, shy and modest woman. “She was not an educated woman and her language skills were poor. She had worked with us as a driver initially and then did some social activity. Since she was an efficient driver, I encouraged her to continue driving. She left us almost five years ago,” he said.



After quitting the NGO, Bharati worked as a driver with a private organisation and then bought her own cab.

“I was told she joined Uber group. The last time I spoke to her was about three to four days ago, when I met her at one of our meetings,” Manohar said.

This article originally appeared on The Hindustan Times.