Indian-Origin Banker Chirayu Rana Sues JPMorgan Executive Lorna Hajdini for Sexual Coercion

On April 28, 2025, a lawsuit was filed in the New York County Supreme Court by Chirayu Rana, a 35-year-old Indian-origin finance professional, against Lorna Hajdini, 37, an Executive Director at JPMorgan Chase's leveraged finance division. The case, initially filed under the pseudonym "John Doe," accused Hajdini of coercing him into months of non-consensual sexual acts, drugging him on multiple occasions, and using racial slurs tied to threats about his career. The lawsuit also names JPMorgan Chase as a defendant for alleged retaliation. The New York Post later identified the complainant as Chirayu Rana. JPMorgan conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence supporting the claims. Hajdini has denied all allegations. No trial date has been set.

A Career That Became a Trap

Chirayu Rana is a former basketball player and a graduate of Rutgers University, with a lengthy career in New York's finance sector. Before joining JPMorgan in the spring of 2024, he had worked at Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, The Carlyle Group, and Houlihan Lokey. He was not a newcomer. He was experienced, accomplished, and by any measure, someone who had earned his place in the room.

When he joined JPMorgan's leveraged finance team, he says, that changed fast.

According to court documents, the alleged incidents began in spring 2024, shortly after both he and Hajdini joined the same team. In one instance, the plaintiff claimed Hajdini dropped a pen and, while picking it up, rubbed his leg and squeezed his calf, then remarked that she loved basketball players.

It sounds almost dismissible, doesn't it? A comment. A touch. Easy to question, easy to brush off. But according to Rana, it was just the beginning.

"Do You Want a Future at JPMorgan?"

Court documents further alleged that Hajdini referred to him as her "little brown boy" and questioned whether senior management would accept "some Brown boy Indian leading originations." The complaint said the alleged behaviour was tied to threats about his career, including promotions and job security. At one point, she allegedly told him, "Do you want a future at JPMorgan?" while pressuring him into sexual acts.

Read that again slowly.

A senior executive allegedly telling a junior colleague in the middle of coercing him whether he wanted a future at the firm. That is not a relationship. That is a transaction forced at knifepoint, where the knife is someone's livelihood.

Rana also accused her of drugging him on multiple occasions and assaulting him, claiming she turned him into what the lawsuit described as a "sex slave."

The lawsuit also names JPMorgan Chase as a defendant for alleged retaliation.

JPMorgan Says It Investigated. It Found Nothing.

This is where the story becomes complicated and important to report honestly.

JPMorgan's internal investigation reviewed emails, phone records, and conducted employee interviews. The bank found no evidence supporting the allegations. A spokesperson said numerous employees cooperated, but Rana refused to participate or provide key facts central to his claims. "Following an investigation, we don't believe there's any merit to these claims," the bank stated.

Hajdini categorically denied the allegations through her attorneys, saying she never engaged in any inappropriate conduct with Rana and had never visited the location where some acts were alleged to have occurred.

The plaintiff left JPMorgan in late 2024 and filed an internal harassment complaint in May 2025 seeking a multimillion-dollar severance, which was rejected. Associates of the accused have called the entire lawsuit a fabrication. The initial court documents were later withdrawn for what was described as "corrections," and no trial date has been set.

So the truth of what happened or did not happen in those offices is still contested. What is not contested is this: a man felt what he describes as severe enough abuse that he put his name to a lawsuit, accepted the exposure, and chose to go public. Whether the courts ultimately side with him or not, that decision alone tells us something about the weight of what he was carrying.

The Part Nobody Wants to Talk About : Men as Victims

Here is what gets quietly buried whenever a story like this surfaces.

Men experience workplace harassment and coercion too. They just almost never say so.

Research suggests that the experience of sexual harassment has an equal impact on men's and women's psychological health and in some cases has a greater impact on men's well-being. Yet men report it at a fraction of the rate women do. The reasons are not hard to understand, even if they are hard to hear.

There is shame. There is the deeply embedded cultural message that a man cannot be a victim of a woman, that the situation is somehow flattering, or proof of weakness if it is not. There is the fear of being laughed at. The fear of not being believed. And then, in a high-stakes professional environment like Wall Street, there is something even more suffocating: the fear that speaking up will end your career faster than staying silent.

When someone in a position of authority misuses their power, it creates an environment where victims feel trapped, isolated, and unsupported, unable to challenge or report the behaviour due to fear of retaliation, job loss, or damage to their professional reputation.

Rana's lawsuit alleges all of these things. But more than the legal claims, what his story reflects is a pattern that plays out quietly, in offices around the world, every single day, one that most men never speak about at all.

What This Kind of Abuse Does to a Person

It Changes How a Person Sees Themselves

When someone is trapped in coercive situations tied to their career, the impact goes beyond immediate distress. It can deeply alter their sense of identity, self-worth, and control over their own life.

Confusion Becomes Part of the Experience

Abuse often involves a mix of power and occasional kindness, making it harder to recognise. Victims may question their own memories and feelings, unsure if what they experienced was “serious enough.”

The Damage Goes Beyond Emotions

Workplace abuse can affect every part of life, leading to reduced productivity, physical health issues, substance use, and long-term psychological distress, especially when the abuser holds authority.

Power Imbalance Makes It Worse

When the perpetrator is in a position of control, the sense of helplessness intensifies. The inability to safely refuse or leave amplifies both fear and lasting trauma.

The Silence Around Male Victims

Men often struggle even more to process and express such experiences. With limited social space to speak openly, their pain can remain unspoken, internalised, and prolonged.

Why Men Stay Silent And Why That Silence Is Dangerous

The Pressure to Appear Strong

In high-performance workplaces, showing vulnerability is often seen as a liability. Men are expected to remain composed, no matter what they are facing internally. This pressure makes it extremely difficult to admit to being hurt or overwhelmed.

Fear of Judgment and Career Damage

Speaking up can lead to being doubted, ridiculed, or not taken seriously. There is also a real fear that such experiences could harm future opportunities. For many, staying silent feels safer than risking long-term professional consequences.

Power Imbalance Creates Silence

When the person causing harm holds authority, the fear intensifies. Those in junior positions often feel they have no safe way to report or resist. This imbalance keeps many trapped in situations they cannot easily escape.

Silence Is a Survival Response

For many men, silence is a calculated decision to protect themselves. It helps them avoid immediate conflict, humiliation, or retaliation. In environments that feel unsafe, staying quiet can seem like the only option.

The Hidden Cost of Staying Quiet

Over time, silence can lead to deep emotional and psychological strain. It allows harmful behavior to continue without accountability. Ultimately, both individuals and workplace culture suffer when these issues remain unspoken.

What Needs to Change

Regardless of how this specific case is resolved, it has cracked something open that needed to be examined.

Workplace harassment policies need to be built for everyone, not written in language that implicitly assumes the victim is always a woman and the perpetrator is always a man. When those assumptions are baked into the framework, men who are harassed have nowhere to go. Not formally, not emotionally, not professionally.

Organisations need to create genuinely safe reporting channels, anonymous, independent, and clearly separated from the kind of internal process that a powerful senior employee can quietly influence. Rana allegedly filed an internal complaint that went nowhere. That failure is not unique to JPMorgan. It happens everywhere, all the time.

And at a personal level, the people around men who seem to be struggling,  withdrawn, erratic, underperforming, isolating, need to ask better questions. Not "what's wrong with you," but "what happened to you." Those are two very different conversations, and only one of them opens a door.

A Story That Is Not Over

As of May 2025, the lawsuit is ongoing. The allegations are disputed. Lorna Hajdini has deleted her LinkedIn profile. JPMorgan maintains its position. No trial date has been set.

But Chirayu Rana, a married man, a finance professional, someone who spent years building a career across some of the most respected firms in New York, put his name to a document that accused a powerful colleague of things that most men would take silently to their graves.

Whatever the courts decide, that took something real.

And the question his story forces into the open,who do we believe, who do we protect, and who do we never even think to ask?, is one every workplace in the world should be sitting with right now.