Indian woman techie wins lawsuit against Wipro

Court said Ukil was victimised by Wipro leadership for speaking up about unequal pay and a culture of sexism

Shreya Ukil, a 40-year-old Indian woman who was formerly a techie at the Wipro office in London, has won a landmark lawsuit in a British court against the IT major for sacking her on grounds of gender discrimination, unequal pay and victimisation.

"The Wipro leadership team, including its (then) chief executive T.K. Kurien, conspired to push Ukil out of her job and her role in Britain," her counsel Slater Gordon said in a statement from London on Wednesday.

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The court observed that the direction (to sack Ukil) had come from the very top and was followed through with considerable resolve.

"Ukil was victimised by Wipro's leadership for speaking up about sex discrimination, unequal pay and a culture of sexism," the statement said.

Ukil, who worked with Wipro for almost 10 years, won multi-million-dollar contracts for the firm and received numerous performance awards, started raising concerns in 2012, which went unheeded.

Ukil sued the Bengaluru-based outsourcing firm in October 2015, seeking one million pounds compensation for gender discrimination, unequal pay and harassment.

Sacking Ukil and her superior Manoj Punja, 54, the company had then said that they were relieved from service after an internal inquiry established that they were into a relationship but did not report about it to the company as a policy.

Ukil, who was the sales and market development manager for Wipro's back office operations in London, filed the lawsuit with the central London employment tribunal, claiming she was forced into an affair by Punja, a married man, who was head of its business process outsourcing (BPO) office in London.