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UStartup founder, western India. Fully remote team (small company ~20).
**The fraud:** Hired a senior employee (from another state) about a year ago, full-time (40 hrs/week). She had admin access to many things. Turns out she was already working full-time at a US-based company before she even joined us — and continued the entire time. She actively hid it: manipulated her LinkedIn, lied to my face when I confronted her with countless proof. She denied all allegations, while tried nothing to solve them. We also have proof she was doing work for the other company while logged into our time tracker. ~₹20L paid to someone who was never fully working for us.
**I still gave her a graceful exit:** Even after discovering the dual employment in early April, I gave her a generous timeline (end of May). When I later shortened it to end of April after reviewing her output and catching her lying to the team about her exit, she lost it. Argued for hours that I’m cheating her. I explicitly told her she’ll be paid till her last working day.
**She tried to destroy everything:** She convinced herself I wouldn’t pay her — despite me telling her multiple times that payment terms haven’t changed and she’ll be paid till her last day (I have the chat proof). Next morning, within 20 minutes of a simple conversation about handover, she went on a deletion spree across every platform she had access to:
* Deleted all company documentation across multiple platforms
* Deleted 900+ records from our project management tools — every single client project, all tasks, sprint data, etc.
* Attempted to delete from another platform but was blocked (read-only access) — so the intent was to wipe everything she could reach
* Deleted all her own work files from company Google Workspace — the work we literally paid her for
* Emptied trash to make recovery impossible
* We also found her other employer’s work files sitting in her company accountThis wasn’t an accident. It was systematic, across multiple platforms, completed in under an hour.
**Evidence:** Full server-side audit logs — authenticated user ID, timestamps, same IP address across all platforms. Chat records showing the salary argument 20 minutes before the first deletion. Everything preserved. Most data restored from backups — but the intent and damage are documented.
**Complications:**
* Written contract had expired and wasn’t renewed (but salary paid monthly, TDS situation complex, full access and title held throughout)
* Some salary payments were routed through accounts she provided to avoid TDS — I went along with it, so I’m complicit on that front**What I need advice on:**
1. What are the strongest legal hooks here — IT Act 43/66, IPC 406/420, something else?
2. Does the expired contract and the payment arrangement weaken my position?
3. Is legal notice → FIR + civil suit a sound escalation strategy?
4. How to actually proceed?Update:
I wanted to make it clear.
Most of the data was recovered in a few hours. That’s not the problem anymore. The problem is that she destroyed(tried to) years of hard work, after she cheated on the company + she was paid for all her work.
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