BENGALURU (Diya TV) — Shreya Ukil, a 40-year-old woman who was formerly a senior technology specialist at London-based IT giant Wipro, lost her lawsuit alleging gender discrimination lawsuit against the company, as well as unequal pay and victimization.
In a statement, Wipro said the British Tribunal upheld the company’s dismissal of Ukil as appropriate, and rejected her claims of an adverse cultural attitude towards women in the company.
“The Wipro leadership team, including its (then) chief executive T.K. Kurien, conspired to push Ukil out of her job and her role in Britain,” Ukil’s lawyers Slater & Gordon said in a statement from London on May 4.
According to documents that were submitted to the tribunal, Ukil allegedly “submitted to aggressive sexual advances” from her boss, Manoj Punja, after she transferred to London from the company’s offices in Bangalore. Her boss was also married, the documents said.
Punja, who has since resigned his post, is alleged to have told Ukil she was “like one of those seductive dancers from Indian mythology, Apsara, who tested the celibacy of the great saints,” according to a report from The Daily Mail. When she originally declined the sexual advances, Punja was alleged to have told her she was “forgetting who she was talking to.”
Additionally, Ukil alleged she was dramatically under-compensated compared to her male coworkers.
The London Employment Tribunal, however, disagreed with the accusation, and said her release had been handled with the correct amount of diligence.
Wipro issued a statement that said “it was pleased the tribunal had upheld the dismissal of the complainant from the services of the organization as appropriate and rejected claims of adverse cultural attitude towards women in the organization.”
