By DPA,
Wellington : New Zealand police said Thursday they were looking for the owner of a bloodstained bag found near the place in suburban Auckland where an Indian taxi driver was stabbed to death in his cab.
Hiren Mohini, 39, who migrated to New Zealand from Mumbai six years ago to give his wife and two daughters aged five and three a safe place to live, was killed by a passenger he had picked up in the city early Sunday morning.
“We don’t know what the motivation was behind the frenzied knife attack that resulted in Mohini’s tragic death, but we have no reason to believe at this stage that it was robbery,” detective senior sergeant Hywel Jones said in a statement.
“He died at the end of a paltry 15.20 New Zealand dollar ($10.65) unpaid fare after about an eight-minute journey from the city centre.”
Police, who have already recovered a knife near the scene, released a photograph of a bloodstained blue shoulder bag with the words Dicon Aibi and said they wanted to find the owner.
On Thursday, more than 300 taxis, many flying black flags from their radio aerials, followed the hearse carrying Mohini’s body to an Auckland crematorium.
He was the second cab driver to be killed in 14 months and during the funeral service, Tim Reddish, head of the New Zealand Taxi Federation, called on politicians to make security cameras mandatory in all cabs “so we are not back here again”.