Andhra techie's promising career cut short by murder

Hyderabad, Nov 5 (IANS) Arpana B. Jinaga had always dreamed of securing a doctorate from an American university and becoming a professor like her father. But the software professional's promising career was cut short by her murder in Seattle in the US.

Arpana, a bright student, completed her M.S. in embedded systems from Rutger's State University in New Jersey and was counted among the top 20 professionals of embedded systems in the world.

The 24-year-old had recently taken up the job of a software engineer in EMC Corporation in Seattle, and planned to do a doctorate and disseminate knowledge like her father B.C. Jinaga, who is a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University here.

Arpana, who was living alone, used to phone her parents almost every day. When she did not call them for three days, Jinaga grew anxious and alerted his family friend Jayaram in the US.

Jayaram, who went to Arpana's apartment Monday morning, found her dead body and alerted the police.

The Jinaga family, hailing from Gadag in Karnataka but settled here since 1990, plunged into gloom after hearing the shocking news. Her father said that he had no information about the motive and what had exactly happened.

'All we know is that she is no more,' he said.

The last phone call Arpana made to her father was on Thursday, when she said she would be going to attend a Halloween party with her friends the next day.

Arpana had plans to come home in December but instead the family will be receiving her body. Jinaga said they were yet to decide on flying to the US to bring the body. He was waiting for more information from his relatives in the US.

Family members said Arpana always considered her father a role model.

Arpana was the eldest of two daughter of Jinaga, who is director of the school of information technology at JNTU, and Prameela. Their younger daughter Pavitra is pursuing an engineering course at a college here.

Arpana, a gold medallist in B.Tech (electronics and communications) from V.N.R. Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology here, went to the US in 2005 for pursuing M.S. in embedded systems.

She had already proved her skills in the complex field of chip designing by emerging among the top 20 in a worldwide contest of Digital Signal Controller Design organised by America-based Microchip Technologies Inc. She was the only Asian to win that contest.