Noida: A city court has ordered the registration of an FIR against Aon PLC chief executive Gregory C Case, chief people’s officer Lisa Stevens, global head of digital delivery Karl Heery and others after a former senior employee alleged that the company trapped him in a virtual meeting, forced him to resign and then moved to erase evidence he submitted in his whistleblower complaints.Allowing an application under Section 173(4) of BNSS, the court said the material placed before it prima facie pointed to serious allegations — a form of “digital arrest”, wrongful confinement, coercion to resign, destruction of evidence and withholding of Form 16.Citing an Allahabad High Court ruling in Anjum vs State of Uttar Pradesh case, the local court held the registration of an FIR was “justified”.The complainant, Uday Shankar, a former global quality assurance leader who worked from Aon’s Noida office, told the court he was targeted for repeatedly flagging internal wrongdoing. Between 2019 and 2023, he said, he made a series of disclosures through Aon’s internal email channels and the Navex ethics portal on issues such as conflict of interest, workplace harassment, software licence violations, unauthorised access to production data, data privacy breaches, policy violations and financial improprieties.According to Shankar, the issues had a global dimension and were linked to Aon’s Chicago headquarters. He said the company had twice assured him of ‘anti-retaliation protection’ — through letters dated April 14, 2019, and Oct 4, 2023 — promising that no adverse action would be taken against him for whistleblowing.Since the anti-retaliation policy shielded him from being terminated directly, company officials allegedly pressured him into resigning. Shankar told the court that on Nov 21, 2023, he was called into an Outlook Teams meeting by Heery. When he joined, Shankar said, HR head Kanwarpriya Khanna was also present and instructed him to remain seated, keep his phone aside and not leave the meeting without permission.He described this as “digital arrest” — not in the usual sense of an online financial scam involving fake police threats, but as an alleged virtual confinement by company officials during an internal meeting. Shankar said the call lasted about 100 minutes, during which he was not allowed to step away “even for water”, was told to resign, and made to sign a waiver and disclosure letter sent to his official email.”I initially refused to resign without consulting my counsel. But I was threatened that if I was terminated, the company would not clear my background verification,” he added.Shankar further alleged that his official laptop was locked immediately after the meeting, cutting off access to documents linked to his whistleblower complaints. He also claimed that soon after his resignation, his Navex ethics cases were closed, which he described as an attempt to destroy evidence and tamper with audit logs.Shankar told the court that Aon officials also refused to return his personal belongings from the Noida office and instead sent an email threatening to withhold his Form 16 and background verification unless he paid an alleged shortfall of Rs 90,000.He later sent legal notices to Aon PLC and Aon India — a British-American professional services firm — on Jan 14 and March 4, 2025, seeking reinstatement, challenging the “illegal termination”.He filed a civil suit on April 22, 2025. He moved the ACJM court in Nov last year, alleging that police had failed to act on his complaints.
