£6,000 racism payout for mixing up names of Indian colleagues

AN Indian engineer has been awarded nearly £6,000 in compensation after his colleague referred to him by the name of another worker from the same ethnic background.

- By Charlie Bradley

Abhinav Sharma accused his Jaguar Land Rover colleague Magdelena Badescu of prejudice after she confused him with a co-worker who looked and sounded “very different”.

Employment judge Garry Smart said mixing up the names of ethnic minority colleagues was race discrimination as it made them feel “lumped together as a group”.

He added the “adverse inference” of confusing the names of non-white employees was due to race and could therefore be seen as discriminatory.

Mr Sharma said the man Ms Badescu referred to him as, Bhuvnesh Bhardwaj, was bearded, of a larger build, wore glasses and spoke with a British accent.