love_gundu22
Praveen Gurwani
Pay us our dues now
At least 100 disgruntled former employees of Indiabulls office at Mira Road filed a police complaint on Saturday for non-payment of dues and intimidation against the company’s regional manager, Kirti Patel, and branch manager, Ashwin Verma.
The employees who were fired in June, from the Shanti Shopping Centre office, said they were not issued a termination letter or even paid for the period they were on the payroll. They were among 200 people hired during a mass recruitment drive from March.
“The termination was not based on performance, they just randomly decided. I came to work one day and saw that my name had been stricken from the attendance register and the word ‘terminated’ was written across it,� said Yogesh Singh, who worked as a relationship manager and is the sole earning member of his family.
“Earlier they procrastinated when we asked for our salary, but now they bluntly say that they will not pay us and challenge us to do what we can,� said Krishna Iyer, a relationship manager. His former colleague Ratnesh Kumar added, “Faced by an acute financial crisis and an unsympathetic Indiabulls management, we had no choice but to file a police complaint.�
Ashwin Verma, one of the accused, said the head office is processing the dues and the ex-employees will get them eventually.
He added, “We have not threatened anyone. In fact the employees would come to the office in large numbers demanding their dues to intimidate us.�
Defending his managers, Indiabulls director Gagan Banga said, “In the past six months we have hired 1,800 people and if the employees were terminated it was due to individual conduct. Patel and Verma have been with me for several years and I would rather trust them than some ‘terminated’ employees.�
Duty officer V Chauhan of Kanakya police station said that the employees had lodged complaint number 1986/06 against Indiabulls management under Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
“I am not aware of the details of the case. We will look into the matter soon,� said senior PI A Murade