Pune employee death: EY India’s office lacked labour welfare permit, finds probe

In the aftermath of the death of a 26-year-old Ernst & Young (EY) employee due to allegedly high workload, an investigation has found that the company was operating without a state permit to regulate working hours since 2007, reported news agency Reuters.

The mother of audit executive Anna Sebastian Perayil wrote a letter to EY India’s chairman Rajiv Memani claiming that her daughter had died due to the “overwhelming workload” while working at the EY office in Pune. Anna Sebastian Perayil’s family said she died due to a cardiac arrest.

“She worked late into the night, even on weekends, with no opportunity to catch her breath,” Anna Perayil’s mother stated in the letter. The letter sparked a conversation about the effect of high-pressure jobs on the physical and mental health of employees.

Maharashtra’s additional labour commissioner Shailendra Pol and his team inspected the Pune office of EY and stated that it had been operating without a mandatory permit under the state’s ‘Shops and Establishments Act’, reported Reuters.

According to the law, the maximum working hours for adults are nine hours each day and 48 hours each week.

Pol told Reuters, “The company applied for a registration with the labour department only in February 2024 and we rejected it because it had not applied since 2007 when it started this office.”

EY India has been given seven days to respond and explain this lapse. In case non-compliance with the law causes an accident that leads to serious bodily injury or death of a worker, the company could be fined up to ₹5 lakh and the head could get jail time up to six months.

EY had previously stated that the well-being of all employees was of utmost importance and that they were taking up the family’s issues with seriousness and humility.

Shailendra Pol and his team will also be looking into the EY log book for employee hours, welfare policies in the company and whether Perayil had been overworked excessively during her four months of work at the company.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has also taken suo motu cognisance of the case, stating that if the reports are true, excessively overworking people was a grave violation of their rights.

The human rights body issued notice to the union ministry of labour and employment and has sought a detailed report on the matter.