Anna Sebastian Perayil, a CA from Kerala, dies within four months of joining
A 26-year-old employee at EY Pune, one of the Big Four accounting firms, sadly passed away within four months of starting her job, reportedly due to work-related stress according to her family.
Anna Sebastian Perayil, a youthful Chartered Accountant (CA) from Kerala, passed away due to the company overloading her with exhausting tasks. After this tragic loss, Perayil’s mother, Anita Augustine, has composed an email directed to the company’s Indian executive Rajiv Memani.
Perayil’s mother criticizes company; says “she worked tirelessly to meet the expectations”
In her letter, she criticized the company for promoting excessive work and pointed out the stark contrast between their human rights values and her daughter’s actual experience.
Perayil successfully passed her CA Exams in 2023 and started working as an executive at EY Pune in March 2024. Being her first job, she put in a lot of effort to meet the expectations, which had a negative impact on her physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Her mother said she started feeling anxious, unable to sleep, and stressed shortly after starting, but kept going, convinced that dedication and persistence were key to success.
According to her mother, because many workers quit due of the heavy workload, her daughter’s boss asked her to stay and improve the team’s reputation.
“Her manager would often reschedule meetings during cricket matches and assign her work at the end of the day, adding to her stress. At an office party, a senior leader even joked that she would have a tough time working under her manager, which, unfortunately, became a reality she could not escape,” Augustine added.
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She also mentioned that her daughter worked long hours, even on weekends, and faced a heavy workload, particularly with tasks given verbally in addition to her official responsibilities. “I would advise her against undertaking those tasks, but the managers were persistent. She worked tirelessly through the night, even on weekends, without a chance to rest,” she added.
Augustine shared a moment when her daughter’s supervisor gave her an assignment in the evening with a due date the following morning. She added, “Her assistant manager once called her at night with a task that needed to be completed by the next morning, leaving her with barely any time to rest or recover. When she voiced her concerns, she was met with the dismissive response: ‘You can work at night; that’s what we all do’.”
Continuing, she detailed her daughter’s worsening state: “Anna would come back to her room extremely tired, sometimes falling onto the bed without changing clothes, only to receive numerous messages requesting additional reports. She was giving her all, putting in a lot of effort to meet the deadlines. She was a true battler, not one to surrender easily. We advised her to stop, but she was eager to learn and expand her horizons. Nevertheless, the immense pressure was too great for her to handle.”
In her email to the company’s India head, Augustine criticized the company for “glorifying excess work”. She mentioned that her daughter, who was unfamiliar with the “structure, place, and dialect,” was “feeling swamped with tasks that were both planned and unplanned.”
