HDFC Bank Employee Dies At Work In Lucknow; Colleagues Allege Overwork

New Delhi: A 45-year-old woman HDFC bank employee died while at work in Lucknow allegedly due to excessive workload. A senior staff member, Sadaf Fatima suddenly fell off her chair and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. According to her colleagues, Sadaf was under tremendous work pressure. 

“Additional Deputy VP of HDFC Bank in Vibhutikhand, Sadaf Fatima (45), dies under suspicious circumstances while working. The panchnama (record of observation) of her body has been filled, and it has been sent for postmortem. The cause of death will be clear after the postmortem,” Vibhutikhand Assistant Commissioner of Police Radharaman Singh told news agency ANI.

Sadaf’s death follows the death of 26-year-old chartered accountant Anna Sebastian Perayil who worked at EY’s Pune office. Perayil’s mother in a letter to EY’s India head Rajiv Memani blamed backbreaking workload as the reason for her death. The issue has sparked a national uproar with people blaming exploitative and high-pressure work culture for Perayil’s death.  

Following Sadaf’s death, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav took to X to express his concern about the exploitative working conditions.

“Such news is 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 it is how mentally free, healthy and happy a person is,” he stated in his post on X.

He added, “Due to the failed economic policies of the BJP government, the business of companies has reduced so much that to save their business, they make fewer people do many times more work. The BJP government is as much responsible for such sudden deaths as the statements of BJP leaders that mentally demoralize the public.”