The National Association of Software and Services Companies, the IT industry's apex body, on Friday asked BPO firms to ensure that women employees were not the last to be dropped home, in the wake of a call centre employee's murder, allegedly by the driver of a vehicle leased by her employer in Bangalore.

As a standard practice, though not required by the law, the companies should take care to ensure that a woman employee was not the last one to be dropped home, Nasscom president Kiran Karnik told reporters.

"We would like to create further such best practices or anything else we can do to make sure our people are safe and secure in general," he said, adding that the association would continue dialogue with the police for creating a 'conducive' law and order situation and improving the industry's internal system for safety and security, particularly for women.

Describing as 'very unfortunate and sad' and a 'matter of concern' the suspected rape and murder of the 24-year-old woman in Bangalore three days ago, Karnik said.

The murder of the woman, who was married to a software professional eight months ago, came to light only on Friday. The driver of the vehicle has been arrested.

"We also need to look into what are the lessons that we have to learn from this (incident)," Karnik said, on the sidelines of Nasscom's 'India Strategy Summit 2005,' where the findings of the Nasscom-McKinsey Report 2005 on the IT and BPO industries were released.