Infosys sacks 1, suspends 2 techies

While IT bellwether Infosys Technologies added 4,429 to its headcount in the last quarter, three of its employees were also in the news for the wrong reasons leading to two suspensions and one sacking in the IT firm.

First was the episode of an Infosys employee Abhishek Gupta making a hoax call to delay the departure of a flight on October 25.

Gupta had made a hoax call to GoAir at Delhi airport on October 25 since he was late and did not want to miss the flight to Bangalore.

Last month, police arrested a 28-year-old Infosys employee Krishnamurthy in Mysore for allegedly molesting a French woman.

The latest was alleged torture of a domestic help by the company's staffer Pallab Chakraborty and his wife Sanchita in Bangalore.

Chakraborty had joined Infosys less than a month before his arrest and he has been suspended even as the police investigate the case further.

Pallab and his wife had got the girl from West Bengal to do household chores, but she was allegedly tortured by the couple. A social organisation rescued the girl after raiding the couple's house following a tip off.

Asked about the three cases, T V Mohandas Pai, member of the board and head (HRD and education & research), said that while Gupta has been sacked, the other two have been suspended and an investigation is on.

"We are 109,000 people (employees). I think as you grow bigger and bigger, you are no longer a sample but a part of the universe," Pai said.

The incident of the torture of a domestic help was "very, very sad. None of us condone such behaviour," he said, adding that the Bangalore-headquartered, Nasdaq-listed firm has a code of conduct, and takes strict action against employees who don't adhere to it.

Infosys also said it has increased its headcount by 4,429 employees in the last 3-month period.

The company had hired 8,719 employees in the December quarter, but after taking into account attrition and other factors its net addition nearly halved.

"During the quarter, Infosys and its subsidiaries added 8,719 employees (gross). The net addition during the quarter was 4,429," the company statement said.

As on December 31, 2009, Infosys and its subsidiaries have a total of 1,09,882 employees on board, it added.

The company said it has adequate employee strength to meet the market demand.

"Our strategy of investing in enhanced training during the downturn has enabled us to grow rapidly as the recovery begins," Infosys Member of the Board and Head - HRD and Education & Research T V Mohandas Pai said.

The company's board has appointed Marti G Subrahmanyam as the 'Lead Independent Director' with effect from Tuesday.

The company witnessed a decline in attrition rate to 11.6 per cent in the third quarter of this fiscal from 11.8 per cent in the corresponding period in the previous fiscal.

However, on a quarter-on-quarter basis the employee attrition rate has increased from 10.9 per cent in the July-September period.

Although on a year-on-year basis, the IT firm's total employees increased by over 6,800 to 1,09,882 at the end of December 2009, the headcount in the BPO division, however, witnessed a marginal decline.

Infosys BPO's employee base for the December quarter stood at 16,874, where as in the corresponding quarter a year ago it was 16,033.

The number of trainees has increased since the beginning of this financial year from 8,694 to 10,045.