New Delhi: The Union Labour Ministry has announced that it has taken up a complaint and would be looking into the circumstances that led to the death of Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old chartered accountant with Ernst and Young India. The announcement came amid intense outcry over the death, which was purportedly caused by work stress.
We are deeply saddened by Anna Sebastian Perayil’s untimely death. The claims of a dangerous and exploitative workplace are the subject of an extensive inquiry that is currently in progress. Justice will be served, and the complaint has been formally taken up by @LabourMinistry. @mansukhmandviya,” stated Shobha Karandlaje, the state minister for labour, in a post on X.
In response, she posted a message to BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who called Anna’s passing “very sad but also disturbing at many levels” and asked that an investigation be conducted into her family’s claims that Ernst and Young India was an exploitative workplace.
A Heartbroken Mother’s Letter
Anna’s mother Anita Augustine said her daughter passed away only four months after Anna started working at the company. She also urged the company’s leadership to address a work culture that “seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human being behind the role” in a letter to Rajiv Memani, chairman of Ernst & Young India.
“As a bereaved mother who has lost her beloved child, Anna Sebastian Perayil, I am writing this letter in sorrow. “Although writing these words makes my heart heavy and my soul broken, I feel compelled to share our story so that no other family has to go through the suffering we are,” the mother stated in the letter.
She reported that Anna did exceptionally well in school and college, passing the challenging chartered accounting exam with honours. Her first job was at EY, and she was excited to work for such a famous organisation. However, my world fell apart on July 20, 2024, four months later, when I got the heartbreaking news that Anna had died. She was only twenty-six.”
Weeks before she received the devastating news, the distraught mother described what had happened.
My spouse and I travelled to Pune on Saturday, July 6th, in order to attend Anna’s CA Convocation. We took her to the hospital in Pune because she had been complaining for the past week of chest constriction whenever she arrived at her PG late at night (around 1 am). The cardiologist came to assuage our anxieties after confirming that her ECG was normal and that she was eating extremely late. We were encouraged that it wasn’t anything serious when he prescribed antacids. She insisted on continuing to work after seeing the doctor, despite the fact that we had travelled all the way from Kochi, claiming there was a lot of work to be done and she wouldn’t receive leave.
We were encouraged that it wasn’t anything serious when he prescribed antacids. She insisted on continuing to work after seeing the doctor, despite the fact that we had travelled all the way from Kochi, claiming there was a lot of work to be done and she wouldn’t receive leave. She went back to her PG late that evening as well. She joined us in the morning on Sunday, July 7, the day of her convocation, but she continued to work from home until the afternoon, so we arrived at the convocation site late,” she wrote.
Using her own hard-earned money, my daughter’s greatest ambition was to bring her parents to her graduation. She took us and purchased our airline tickets. It pains me to inform you that she was unable to enjoy those two days with our child due of the pressures of work, even though they were the last we would have with them.” Even on the weekends, Anita Augustine said that Anna worked long hours “with no opportunity to catch her breath”. “There was a time when her assistant manager called her late at night with a task that needed to be finished by the following morning, giving her very little time to relax or recover. She was given the condescending comment, “You can work at night,” when she expressed her worries.
After she would come back to her room completely worn out, sometimes even just passing out on the bed without even getting dressed, she would receive a barrage of texts requesting more reports. She was working extremely hard to fulfil the deadlines, giving it her all. She was a fierce fighter who did not give up easy. She wanted to learn and experience new things, even if we told her to give up. But even she found the intense pressure to be too much,” the mother stated.
The fact that no organisation representative showed up for Anna’s funeral grieved the family members, according to them. “No EY employees showed up for Anna’s burial.
Anna’s funeral was attended by no one from EY. It hurts so much to have her gone at such a crucial time for a worker who gave your company her all up until the very end. Her mother replied, hoping that her daughter’s experience “leads to real change” and that “Anna deserved better, and so do all the employees who continue to work under these conditions.”
Ernst & Young’s Statement
In a statement, Ernst & Young India expressed its sincere sadness over Anna’s passing and stated that it was handling the family’s contact with the “utmost seriousness and humility”.
We are grieving for Anna Sebastian’s awful and unexpected death in July 2024, and we send our sincere condolences to her family. Anna joined S R Batliboi, an EY Global member business, on March 18, 2024, and worked in the audit department for a brief four months. We are all forever changed by the awful way in which her bright career was cut short. Although there is no way to make up for the loss the family has suffered, we have offered all the support we normally do during difficult times and we will do so going forward,” the statement read.
We are responding to the family’s correspondence with the deepest humility and concern. We value every employee’s health above everything else, and we’ll keep looking for methods to make our 1,00,000 employees in EY member companies in India work in a healthy environment,” the business continued.
Anna Sebastian Perayil – Author’s View
What has happened to the corporates these days? They don’t even care about their employee’s health and well being. All the want is profits no matter even if it is taking away lives of its employees. Anna Sebastian Perayil hardly joined the Ernst and Young 4 months ago and now we are hearing the news of her death because of work load. She was a Chartered Accountant (CA) by profession. These organizations need to take care of their employees before fulfilling their Corporate Social Responsibility towards society and people. They are not worried about their employees and striving for CSRs.
This is one of the many cases that has come to the light but various organisations are doing the same. Many coaching institutes are hiring people for writing content, editing videos and designing graphics. They are either not paying their employees or paying after 2-3 months. I know many such organisations where I myself has worked but could not take their names here. They have not even paid my 2 months salary during the initial days of my career when I was just a beginner.
Shubhangi Gupta is a distinguished content writer and the visionary founder of The Unpleasant – Acha Nahi Sabse Sacha. With a Master’s degree in Commerce from University of Lucknow, Shubhangi has seamlessly blended her academic background with her passion for reading and writing, embarking on a successful career as a content writer since 2019.
