’Chamaat maarenge, Bihar pahuch jaogi’: Ex- HSBC employee shares incident of humiliation at workplace

A former HSBC India employee shared harrowing incidents of workplace toxicity and the humiliation she faced based on her ethnicity.

Nitika Kumari, a customer due diligence (CDD) analyst at HSBC, shared in a LinkedIn post that she had been neglecting comments by colleagues and seniors for a year now, thinking "Isn't this what corporate life feels like?"

She shared that there came a point where it all became unbearable for her, and she suffered serious mental health issues and panic attacks because of it.

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Sharing an incident of April this year, Nitika said she was subjected to ethnically insensitive remarks by her colleague Ajmeera Ashok.

“The exacts words which was used by him is 'EK CHAMAAT MAARENGE, BIHAR PAHUCH JAOGI' which exactly means - I will slap you so hard, you will go back to Bihar,” she wrote in her post.

Nitika said she followed the protocol and informed her manager Ayeesha Talukdar about the incident “but nothing came out of it". She added that a team meeting was called thereafter where she was told that her colleague did not physically assault her, “it was just a hatred comment which I can let go of”.

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Nitika said she reached out to the concerned HR team and filed a POSH (Protection of women from Sexual Harassment Act) complaint against Ashok. However, on May 3, she received an email from the HR team asking for feedback, but it did not have any updates on action taken.

She then said she had let go of it thinking that she's soon leaving the office as it was her notice period. But another incident occurred during her smoke break that forced her to write the post.

Nitika claimed that Vinay Kumar Rajuldev, the AMO from the UK CDD team approached her during her smoke break and made an objectifying comment.

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She elaborated on the comment saying: “The comment he made was 'Tmhare jaisi ladki hum aaj tk ni dekhe hai, akele pura UK team ka naam kharab kr k rkhi hai.' which means - He has never seen a girl like me, I have ruined the name of their team.”

She then asked him to give a reason for his comment, to which he replied, “tmhare alawa kisi UK team ki ladki ko hm ni dkhe hai cigarette pite huye' which means - he has never seen any girl from the UK team smoking cigarettes.”

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Nitika's LinkedIn post had over 1.3 likes and 6,000 comments at the time of writing this story.  

Several LinkedIn users commented on her post and shared their bad experiences at different companies.