- TCS BPO in Nashik faces sexual harassment and religious targeting allegations since 2022
- TV Mohandas Pai calls for criminal prosecution of HR executive and stronger anti-harassment safeguards
- He suggests independent whistleblower channels and external oversight committees
The case emerging from a Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) BPO facility in Maharashtra's Nashik involving years of alleged sexual harassment and religiously motivated targeting of women employees has shaken one of India's most prominent voices in the corporate world.
"My first reaction was one of shock. TCS is a great company and I would presume they have good systems to prevent this kind of harassment," TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital, told NDTV on Tuesday.
He, however, indicated that this expectation from TCS was what made the allegations harder to process.
"It is a breakdown of systems and processes and capture of human resources by communal elements. I read that this person used to grab a woman in front of everybody and the people kept quiet," Pai told NDTV.
"There's an element of fear. It is something that you cannot believe can happen in any corporate organisation - much, much more than a great company like TCS," he added.
NDTV first broke the silence on the case in a live broadcast. Investigators believe the pattern of harassment dates to around 2022, running across multiple victims over three to four years, involving both sexual abuse and religiously motivated conduct, before the police moved in undercover.
"What is senior management doing? What is the person whom this HR person was reporting to doing? You would have heard murmurs. You would have heard things," Pai said. "People complained to the HR and they kept quiet. I think HR should be criminally prosecuted along with all these people. Strong criminal action has to be taken."
Pai suggested the functional safeguards against such crimes should have annual anti-sexual harassment training, independent whistleblower complaint channels that bypass HR entirely, dedicated redressal webpages feeding into committees headed by external members and reporting to audit committees. These structures are insulated from management interference, he added.
"If you give a complaint against management, you can't have management overlooking all this. It's almost like a company with no process, a company that doesn't follow any rules."
The communal nature of the case has drawn particular alarm, with arrests being made and an investigation underway. The coordinated targeting of women on religious lines within a white-collar workplace also sits uncomfortably with what corporate India believes itself to be.
"We hear about 'love jihad'; we hear about all these kinds of things all over the place. And now to have it in a white-collar industry of one of the greatest companies of this country, where four or five people seem to have been carrying on a campaign on criminal grounds, on religious grounds, has shaken the conscience of the corporate sector," Pai said.
He added he had personally seen other forms of faith-based workplace conduct during his career, such as evangelists on campuses and online groups targeting colleagues across community lines. Action was taken against them, he said.
What Pai had not seen until now was the HR itself becoming complicit, and supervision above it going silent for years, Pai said. "I've not seen a failure of HR. I've not seen a failure of the supervisor above the HR person. I've not seen a failure for multiple years, until the police had to come undercover," he said.
"There has to be a wholesale redressal across corporate India. Corporations have to guarantee that people can work in a safe environment," he said, adding companies must open independent whistleblower lines and write to every employee promising protection, and audit their internal processes.
