Infosys ex-employee cries bias over not knowing Hindi

In yet another instance of a former American employee alleging harassment at Infosys Technologies, one Layla Bolten has sued the Bangalore-headquartered information technology firm in that country. She has claimed she was discriminated against by colleagues, mostly Indians, as she could not speak in Hindi.

Bolten, said to be an "experienced tester", has filed a lawsuit in a US federal court claiming harassment while she was working on a project to develop the health benefit exchange system, a key feature of the Affordable Care Act (ACT), or Obamacare, for the District of Columbia.

In June last year, Infosys Public Services, a subsidiary of Infosys in the US, had bagged this $49.5-million contract from the District of Columbia. The contract included designing and building the IT infrastructure to support the Washington DC Health Benefit Exchange, an online shopping centre for health insurance created under ACT.

In her civil lawsuit, filed late last year, Bolten has claimed she was harassed because she was not Indian and excluded from work-related conversations by supervisors, who spoke in Hindi. Bolten has also claimed that people with less experience than her were promoted ahead of her; this is why she eventually quit Infosys. According to the lawsuit, Bolten has said Infosys brought in H-1B visa holders to work on the ACT project, which had around 100 employees, including three Americans.

According to global media reports, Infosys has filed a motion for dismissal on this suit on a number of technical and legal grounds and is awaiting a ruling from the judge. Approached by Business Standard, a spokesperson for the company denied Bolten's claims and called those "false and baseless".

"Infosys is an equal-opportunity employer. Ms Bolten has made various false and baseless allegations and we categorically deny her claims," an Infosys spokesperson said over email. "We have filed a motion in court to dismiss her complaint by refuting all her allegations and we expect to prevail."

In the past couple of years, Infosys has faced several allegations by its American employees, as well as job seekers - from alleged visa misuse to discrimination because of their nationalilty and race.

Infosys Technologies Limited