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Infosys told to take back engineer it sacked on terror taint

Proved right: Electronics engineer Rashid Hussain at a press conference in Jaipur on Wednesday.

JAIPUR: Three years after losing his job with IT major Infosys following his illegal detention by Rajasthan Police in connection with the May 2008 Jaipur serial blasts, electronics engineer Rashid Hussain has won the court battle and obtained a judgment directing the multi-national giant to reinstate him in his former position with the payment of full back wages and other benefits.

The Special Operations Group (SOG) of Rajasthan Police had picked up Mr. Hussain on June 1, 2008, on suspicion of involvement in the blasts and kept him in illegal custody for nine days without formal charges. This was first instance of a qualified professional hunted down in connection with the Jaipur blasts, in which about 70 persons were killed.

After his release on SOG's failure to find anything incriminating, Infosys BPO Limited – where Mr. Hussain, 38, was working as a senior network engineer – terminated his service citing “discrepancies” in his records about his previous work experience submitted at the time of his appointment in 2005.

Mr. Hussain claimed that he was a victim of “community profiling” and challenged his dismissal in a labour court here while pointing out that Infosys had violated the principles of natural justice by not launching disciplinary proceedings and not affording him an opportunity to give explanation on the charges levelled against him.

The special court of the Authority under the Rajasthan Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1958, has in its six-page judgment delivered on March 31 declared the termination order of July 17, 2008 null and void and ordered Infosys to take Mr. Hussain back in service with full retrospective benefits applicable during the dismissal period. The court rejected all arguments of Infosys defending its action.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Mr. Hussain said the judgment had vindicated his stand that he was the target of “double victimisation” in the shape of illegal detention by police and harassment by his employer because of his religious identity in the wake of serial blasts.

“The stigma of being branded anti-national and terrorist [still] haunts me. I am just one of the hundreds of educated Muslims across the country whose life and career were ruined with false allegations in the aftermath of blasts in several cities,” said Mr. Hussain, who has since taken up teaching at Gyan Vihar University here. He now heads the electronics and telecommunication engineering department at the private varsity.

Infosys contended in the court that Mr. Hussain had concealed certain facts and submitted some other wrong facts while joining the company. The IT major issued a letter to Mr. Hussain on July 14, 2008, informing him of initiation of disciplinary action against him, but terminated his service barely three days later through a memo without any proceedings.

Mr. Hussain said he approached the Infosys BPO Limited office here on Tuesday with the court judgment, but the local officers told him that they would first get instructions from the company's headquarters in Bangalore: “Infosys seems to be applying all tactics to buy time to explore legal options to get [the operation of] the judgment stayed.”

Rajasthan High Court lawyer Prem Krishna Sharma, who represented Mr. Hussain in the labour court, said the motive behind termination of his service was the IT giant's unwillingness to continue him in employment after his nine-day detention by police.

People's Union for Civil Liberties general secretary Kavita Srivastava said the “subtle communalism” practised against Mr. Hussain had indicated a nexus between the government and the corporate sector to target innocent Muslim professionals in the so-called war against terror. She said the marching orders given to Mr. Hussain smacked of religious profiling.

According to the show-cause notice by Infosys, Mr. Hussain had claimed while joining that he worked with EMS Technology in Patna as a technical support engineer for a year after teaching at R.P. Sharma Institute of Technology for two years between 2002 and 2004. The notice said the EMS did not exist.

Mr. Hussain affirmed that he was working at both places during June 2004 to July 2005 and said he had submitted papers proving the existence of EMS.

He said the background check by Infosys at the time of his recruitment did not find any such discrepancy and suspected that the SOG, headed by Additional Director-General A. K. Jain in 2008, had influenced Infosys to take action against him.

Association for Protection of Civil Rights convenor Paikar Farooque and Jamat-e-Islami Hind State unit president Mohammed Salim also addressed the press conference.

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