NEW DELHI — The head of India’s main outsourcing industry body will be prosecuted for allegedly giving inadequate security to a woman employee killed while traveling home after work, following the rejection of an appeal by the Supreme Court yesterday.
Pratibha Srikanth Murthy, an employee of an Indian division of Hewlett-Packard Co., was being driven home in a company taxi after finishing her night shift in Bangalore when her driver raped and murdered her in December 2005, according to police.
Som Mittal was the managing director of Hewlett-Packard GlobalSoft at the time. He is now the president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).
The government of Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital, is prosecuting Mittal under a law governing employee safety, said Sanjay Hegde, counsel for Karnataka. The Supreme Court rejected his challenge to the charge yesterday.
Murthy’s death prompted debate about the safety of women working the night shift in call centers and back offices across the country. Hegde said the case was intended to be a signal to employers to do more to protect their employees and pay heed to the law.
The Supreme Court said: “If you are the head of a company you are responsible for the safety of your employees.”
Mittal has been charged with violating a 2002 Karnataka government order banning employment of women in night shift. It was also alleged that though the company provided transport facility, it had not made provision for security.
The Karnataka High Court had earlier ordered Mittal’s prosecution in the case. Mittal challenged the High Court order in the Supreme Court. His plea has, however, been rejected by the apex court bench, headed by Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan.
“The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the earlier judgment of two judges, who have refused to squash the prosecution under the Shops and Establishments Act. As a consequence, the prosecution will continue in the state of Karnataka,” counsel for Karnataka government said.
Though neither Mittal nor the company have been pronounced guilty, the top court’s decision will provide some relief to Pratibha family members who have spent the past two years seeking justice. Pratibha’s uncle S. Srinivasa said: “A person who heads an institution is always responsible, whether he’s in the institution or outside the institution, negligence is negligence. It’s associated with them, it’s caused by them.”
In a similar case in 2007, police in Maharashtra state arrested a driver and another man for raping and murdering a woman call center employee in the city of Pune, close to Mumbai.
Although more than 19,000 women reported that they were raped in 2006, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, the call center cases have been followed closely by the Indian media.
NASSCOM helped draw up a set of safety guidelines which said a guard must travel along with the driver in company taxis, and a woman employee must never be the first to be picked up or the last to be dropped off. “That was what got violated,” said Hegde.
If convicted, Mittal faces a “token” fine of just 1,000 rupees (about $25), Hegde said, along with a criminal record.
— With input from agencies
