Work pressure claims another life: Lucknow woman banker collapses, dies in office

Days after a Pune employee's death raised concerns about work pressure, a woman in Lucknow died after falling from her chair at the HDFC Bank. The incident has sparked outrage, with politicians like Akhilesh Yadav calling for scrutiny of work environments.

A Lucknow lady died after falling from her chair in the office, only days after the government was alerted to the death of a Pune employee due to work pressure. Her colleagues told a publication she was under work pressure. The incident occurred on Tuesday, and the woman was named as Sadaf Fatima, an HDFC Bank employee. According to the report, she was appointed Additional Deputy Vice-President of HDFC Bank's Vibuti Khand branch in Gomtinagar.

Sadaf slipped out of her chair at work on September 24. She was transported to a hospital and confirmed dead. Her body was later submitted for a postmortem, the report stated.

In an X post, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav termed the incident “worrying” and said it was “a symbol of the current economic pressure in the country”.

"All businesses and government organisations will have to seriously consider this. This represents an irreversible loss of the country's human resources. Such abrupt fatalities call the working circumstances into question. The true measure of a country's growth is not an increase in the number of services or products, but how psychologically free, healthy, and happy a person is," a rough translation of Akhilesh Yadav's Hindi tweet stated.

The Samajwadi Party chief also slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and alleged the economic policies of the country had failed.

Just four months after joining the Pune-based Ernst & Young (EY) business, 26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil, a woman chartered accountant, passed away from stress at work in July of this year. In September, Sebastian's mother wrote to Rajiv Memani, chairman of EY India, after her daughter passed away, claiming that her daughter was affected by her daughter's heavy workload and long work hours. But the company refuted the accusations.

Union Minister for Labour Mansukh Mandaviya had recently said Perayil’s case is being probed.