A former supervisor at Indian outsourcing firm HCL America claims in a lawsuit that he was fired after reporting that one of his Muslim-Pakistani subordinates was being harassed by an Indian worker at the Milpitas company where HCL was providing IT services.

HCL, based in Sunnyvale and owned by an Indian company, has 15,000 employees across the country providing consulting and IT services. A spokesman for HCL said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit highlights the potential cultural tensions in a Silicon Valley workforce with workers from all around the world. HCL America has workers from from 114 different nationalities, according to a company press release. It’s also one of the top users of H-1B visas. In fiscal year 2017, the company was approved for about 4,400 visas.

William Garrett, a former HCL supervisor who was providing IT services at Milpitas-based memory chip manufacturer Micron Technologies, filed suit earlier this month in Santa Clara County Superior Court alleging wrongful termination and retaliation. In an interview with this news organization, Garrett, who is African American, said he wondered if his background played a role in his eventual dismissal.

“I wondered if my race and my age had something to do with this,” he said. “I’m 51 and the rest of them are fairly younger than me.”

Garrett said he first learned that one of his subordinates was being harassed in April 2018 at a get-together of HCL co-workers. According to his lawsuit, a Pakistani Muslim man told Garrett he was being harassed and bullied by a Micron supervisor, who was an Indian Sikh.

“He just said, ‘This guy is really giving me some problems at work, it’s pretty bad. He’s harassing me, he’s ridiculing me because sometimes I drink, sometimes I smoke, and I’m a Muslim and he ridicules me for this,'” Garrett said.

Alcohol is generally prohibited in Islam and many Muslims do not drink. Micron did not immediately respond to a request for comment but Garrett’s attorney noted that Micron is not a defendant in the lawsuit.

Garrett said he thought about the allegations over the weekend, and talked again with his HCL subordinate, who asked Garrett to intervene. “I said, ‘Look man, if I let this cat out of the bag it can’t put it back in. He says, ‘I know, I know,’” Garrett said. “And so I reported the incident to my manager, my direct manager.”

Garrett said he was told to re-arrange work assignments so that the HCL subordinate and the Micron employee would no longer work together. But, according to the lawsuit, the Micron employee learned of Garrett’s report and intimidated the HCL subordinate into recanting claims that he’d been bullied or harassed.

Garrett said that a few weeks later, he got a call from his supervisor as he was driving home with his fiancée. “He tells me, ‘Look William, we’re going to be releasing you from this assignment.’ He said, ‘A few managers got together and decided that we need to get you out of here before there’s any more problems,’” Garrett said.

Garrett said he was bewildered by the firing, which came after workers at HCL and Micron had gone through a training about identifying and reporting harassment and discrimination. A few days after reporting the HCL subordinate’s harassment, Garrett said he received a glowing annual review.

“I still don’t really understand what I did wrong, if I did anything wrong,” he said. “I was following the rules of both organizations.”

Garrett said he struggled after the firing, which he says ruined his relationships with HCL, which he joined in 2010, and with Micron. Eventually, he said he found another, lower-paying job at a help desk.

Now, he says, he’s not sure if he’d report similar harassment again. “I would really have a hard time. I think that I would encourage that individual to go to HR themselves,” he said. “I would be hesitant in being directly involved. This really messed me up.”