A female HDFC Bank employee in Lucknow reportedly passed away on Tuesday. Sadaf Fatima, a Lucknow woman dies while holding the position of Additional Deputy Vice-President at the HDFC Bank's Vibuti Khand Gomtinagar branch, died after falling from her chair at work. According to reports surfacing in Lokmat Times Nagpur and Dainik Bhaskar, it has been suspected that work-related stress may have played a role in her sudden death.

It happened on a Tuesday, while Fatima was working at r office. Witnesses reported, that she suddenly collapsed from her chair. Her coworkers immediately rushed her to a nearby hospital, but doctors declared her dead upon arrival. Her body was taken for a postmortem examination to determine the cause of her death.

Lucknow woman dies
Image Source: Toner Buzz

The unfortunate incident has raised questions about the stress at the workplace. Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav reacted to the incident on social media. Yadav wrote, “All companies and government departments will have to think seriously in this regard. This is an irreparable loss of the country’s human resources. Such sudden deaths bring the working conditions under question. The real measure of the progress of any country is not the increase in the figures of services or products but how mentally free, healthy and happy a person is,” a translation of Akhilesh Yadav’s post in Hindi.

The Samajwadi Party chief also criticized the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claiming that the country's economic policies have been unsuccessful.

“Due to the failed economic policies of the BJP government, the business of companies has reduced so much that to save their business, they make fewer people do many times more work. The BJP government is as much responsible for such sudden deaths as the statements of BJP leaders that mentally demoralise the public,” he tweeted.

“To overcome this problem, companies and government departments should make active and meaningful efforts for ‘immediate improvement’,” his post read.

This incident occurred just days after a similar event involving an Ernst & Young employee in Pune, as reported by News18. A 26-year-old chartered accountant named Anna Sebastian Perayil who died from work-related stress, four months after joining Ernst & Young (EY) in Pune. A letter was sent to EY India chairman Rajiv Memani by Sebastian's mother in September stating that the overwork and long hours had severely affected her daughter. However, the firm refused the allegations made.

As investigations continue, the incident has cast its shroud of questions on the toll of stress in high-pressure corporate environments and the need to address mental health and work conditions.

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