Days after the death of a woman employee of Ernst & Young (EY) India allegedly due to overwork in Pune, a woman employee of HDFC Bank in Lucknow allegedly died under work pressure.
On September 24, Sadaf fell off her chair while working in the office. She was rushed to a hospital, where she was declared dead. Her body was later sent for a postmortem, it said.
In an X post, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav termed the incident “worrying” and said it was “a symbol of the current economic pressure in the country”.
“All companies and government departments will have to think seriously in this regard. This is an irreparable loss of the country’s human resources. Such sudden deaths bring the working conditions under question. The real measure of the progress of any country is not the increase in the figures of services or products but how mentally free, healthy and happy a person is,” a rough translation of Akhilesh Yadav’s post in Hindi suggested.
The victim, Anna Sebastian Perayil passed her CA exams in 2023 and worked at EY India for four months as part of the Audit team at S R Batliboi, a member firm of EY Global, in Pune. Her promising career was cut short as she passed away due to what her mother claimed as “glorification of overwork”.
In her letter, Anna’s mother claimed that it was her daughter’s first job, and she was excited about joining the company. Within just four months, however, she succumbed to “excessive workload.” The victim also worked late into the night and on weekends, returned to her PG accommodation completely exhausted on most days. She was also burdened with “backbreaking work” as a newcomer, the letter claimed, noting that nobody from the company attended her funeral.
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