Pregnant Araceli Roiz to sue Phaneesh Murthy

It's getting murkier and murkier. Now Araceli Roiz's law firm Aiman-Smith & Marcy-in a statement had said that the ousted iGate CEO Phaneesh Murthy informed the company's board about his relationship with Roiz only after she told him that she is contemplating legal action against him and she is pregnant.

This revelation considerable weakens Phaneesh Murthy's weak defense that he termed Roiz's charge as at extortion attempt. Now that Roiz is pregnant and the law firm representing her in a detailed statement has documented the scheme of events right from Murthy pressurizing Roiz at work for personal gains to asking her to abort the child. According to Randall Aiman-Smith ( Araceli Roiz's lawyer) said, " Phaneesh Murthy abused his power to force Roiz into a relationship that resulted in a pregnancy, which he pressured her to abort, failing which he allegedly threatened to fire her from her job."

With Roiz announcing that she is going to sue Murthy, both iGate and Murthy are in a tight spot. Since Roiz, eventhough on medical leave is still an iGate employee, and since this has happened in Fremont, California where iGate is based, this becomes more intricate. As the The ‘Fair California's Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibits harassment and discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, mental and physical disability, medical condition, age, pregnancy, denial of medical and family care leave, or pregnancy disability leave or retaliation for protesting illegal discrimination related to one of these categories.

With such a strong act in place, Murthy now needs to fight it legally and the odds are in his favor as he had clearly misused the CEO's office for sexual favors and linked it to her career growth and later indulging in an unethical act of forcing the employee to resign, just because she refused to co-operate any longer.

Where does the case go from here? Roiz's lawyers had indicated that they are looking at court action seriously and in the event of this getting into the court, it indeed will kick start a complicated series of proceedings that will be so damning for both iGate and Murthy as more skeletons and dirty linens will tumble out of the cupboards.