JPMorgan accused of retaliating against Indian H-1B worker

Indian software developer Prafull Khare alleged that bank gave him assignments not matching duties outlined in his visa application

An Indian software developer on an H-1B visa unlawfully fired by JPMorgan Chase & Co after he complained about race and national origin discrimination, according to a new federal lawsuit.

Prafull Khare alleged that executives at the bank gave him work assignments that did not match up with the job duties outlined in the application for his specialty occupation visa sponsored by the company, Bloomberg Law News reported.

Those executives also “put him under a microscope, were constantly searching for flaws, and had misrepresented Khare’s work performance,” he said in a complaint filed Monday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

After Khare complained about what he viewed as discrimination, JPMorgan retaliated by firing him in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, the lawsuit said.

Khare was employed as vice president of product management at Chase’s offices in Plano, Texas, where he worked on cloud networking, beginning in January 2023, according to the lawsuit.

But executives at the bank assigned him tasks “with unrealistic and unattainable completion dates, misrepresented the work that he had performed, misquoted statements regarding his work, and falsely asserted that his suggestions and proposals were not technically feasible,” the lawsuit said.

Executives retaliated against Khare by assigning further work projects outside the scope of his job description after he complained about discrimination, the complaint said. He was terminated in April during his probationary period at the company.

The lawsuit seeks backpay and compensatory damages.

A representative for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment to Bloomberg Law News.

The H-1B program allows highly skilled foreign workers like Khare to work in the US. In recent years Indian techies have cornered about 70% of such visas capped at 85,000 new slots each year.