JPMorgan executive Lorna Hajdini sued by ex-banker Chirayu Rana on April 27, then complaint pulled for 'correction': what is alleged, what is denied, what is unresolved

On Monday, April 27, 2026, a sexual-harassment, racial-harassment and professional-coercion lawsuit was filed in the New York County Supreme Court naming Lorna Hajdini, an executive director at JPMorgan Chase's Leveraged Finance division, as principal defendant, with JPMorgan Chase named as co-defendant on retaliation and failure-to-investigate counts. The complaint was initially filed under the pseudonym "John Doe." Within days the complaint was returned by the court for "correction" and removed from public access, JPMorgan said its internal investigation had found no merit to the claims, Hajdini's lawyers issued a categorical denial, and the plaintiff was identified by The New York Post and the Daily Mail as Chirayu Rana, a 35-year-old former JPMorgan banker who exited his subsequent role at private-equity firm Bregal Sagemount on April 2, 2026.

This is a developing legal matter in which all central allegations are contested. The plaintiff's account, the defendant's denial, the bank's internal-investigation finding and the procedural withdrawal of the complaint sit alongside each other, and no court has yet ruled on the underlying facts. The text below labels each element with the originating source and the procedural status: alleged, denied, reported, or confirmed.

What the complaint alleged

As alleged in the complaint—first reported by The Daily Mail and The New York Post and summarised by NDTV, People, AOL and the Economic Times—the plaintiff worked with Hajdini after joining JPMorgan's leveraged-finance team in 2024. The complaint alleged that beginning in spring 2024, Hajdini engaged in a pattern of "severe sexual abuse," racial harassment, and professional coercion, including coercing the plaintiff into sexual acts without consent, drugging him, and threatening his career. The complaint alleged that the plaintiff filed a written internal complaint with JPMorgan in May 2025 detailing race-based and gender-based discrimination, harassment and the alleged sexual abuse, and that the bank failed to investigate properly and retaliated against him.

The complaint, as media outlets that read it before withdrawal reported, also alleged that Hajdini exercised significant influence over the plaintiff's compensation and career trajectory at JPMorgan, framing her conduct as a power-asymmetric form of workplace abuse. People described the allegations as "sensationally lurid"; AOL characterised them as "graphic." Specific details of the allegations were widely circulated on social media before the complaint was pulled from the court docket, fuelling viral attention that several of the same outlets later described as outpacing the underlying procedural state of the case.

What the defendant says

Hajdini's attorneys, in a statement issued through a JPMorgan spokesperson to People, AOL and other outlets, said: "Lorna categorically denies the allegations. She never engaged in any inappropriate conduct with this individual of any kind and has never even been to the location where the alleged sexual assault supposedly took place." That is a categorical denial on both the conduct and the venue components of the complaint.

Two publicly reported facts that—if confirmed in court—would materially undercut the lawsuit's structural premise have surfaced through the Economic Times and New York Post coverage. First, Hajdini and Rana did not share a reporting line at JPMorgan; they worked under different managing directors, meaning Hajdini was not the plaintiff's direct supervisor and had no formal authority over his compensation. That cuts directly against the lawsuit's professional-coercion theory. Second, sources cited by the New York Post indicated that Rana had previously attempted to negotiate a financial settlement with JPMorgan—reportedly seeking a multi-million-dollar payout—before filing the lawsuit. Neither has been independently confirmed by court filings, given the complaint's withdrawal.

What JPMorgan says

JPMorgan Chase, through a spokesperson, told People and other outlets: "Following our investigation, we don't believe there's any merit to these claims. While numerous employees cooperated with the investigation, the complainant refused to participate and has declined to provide facts that would be central to support his allegations." The bank confirmed that its HR department and in-house lawyers conducted what it described as a "thorough" review, including team phone records and emails. According to the bank's statement, the underlying inquiry began after Rana's May 2025 internal complaint and concluded with no finding of merit.

Two elements of the bank's posture are worth noting. First, the explicit framing that the complainant "refused to participate" is unusual in workplace-harassment investigations, where complainant cooperation is typically central. Second, the bank's confidence in publicly contesting the lawsuit—rather than declining comment and pointing to an active investigation—suggests JPMorgan's compliance and legal teams concluded the litigation risk of a categorical denial was lower than the reputational risk of silence in a viral story. That, in turn, is one signal that the bank's internal record is consistent with Hajdini's account.

What we know about the people

Lorna Hajdini is, according to her LinkedIn profile referenced by NDTV and People, a 37-year-old banker with nearly 15 years at JPMorgan Chase. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Statistics from NYU Stern School of Business and completed the Private Equity and Venture Capital program at Harvard Business School Executive Education. She is currently executive director in JPMorgan's Leveraged Finance division, with prior tenure as a vice president covering consumer, retail, pharma/medtech, logistics, and aerospace and defence sector clients. Before joining JPMorgan she interned at a medical director's office and then at Glazer Capital Management and Tudor Investment Corporation.

Chirayu Rana is, according to New York Post and Economic Times reporting, a 35-year-old investment-banker by training, a Rutgers University graduate and former college basketball player. His career has included posts at Houlihan Lokey, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and The Carlyle Group, before he joined JPMorgan's leveraged-finance team in 2024. He moved to Bregal Sagemount—a private-equity firm led by Gene Yoon—as a principal on October 20, 2025, focusing on software, fintech and health-care IT deals. The firm confirmed to the New York Post that "Chirayu Rana was employed by Bregal Sagemount from October 20, 2025 to April 2, 2026. He is no longer an employee," declining to share circumstances of his departure. The April 2 exit occurred roughly three weeks before the lawsuit's April 27 filing.

Why the complaint was withdrawn

A court representative confirmed to People that the complaint had been "returned for correction" and was no longer publicly available. Court representatives could not provide further details, and there is no public information yet on what specifically required correction, whether procedural (formatting, exhibits, captioning, fee schedules) or substantive (mis-pleading, redaction needs, party identification). It is unclear, as People noted, "if and when the suit may be refiled and with what changes."

A withdrawal-for-correction in the New York County Supreme Court is not, by itself, a substantive ruling on the merits; complaints are routinely returned for clerical defects and then refiled. But in this case the withdrawal coincided with the bank's public denial, the defendant's categorical statement, the unmasking of the plaintiff's identity, and reports that the alleged victim had deactivated his LinkedIn and Instagram profiles. Each of those events fits a posture in which counsel may be reassessing the complaint substantively before refiling, but none of them by itself proves that. The procedural status, as of the time of writing on May 10, 2026, is complaint withdrawn for correction, not refiled, with both sides issuing public statements outside the docket.

The legal questions that would matter if it is refiled

If the complaint is refiled, three legal questions will likely structure both pleadings and any discovery. First, standing and reporting line: the professional coercion theory hinges on whether Hajdini exercised power over Rana's pay, performance reviews, deal allocations, retention or promotion. JPMorgan's reported position that the two worked under different managing directors complicates that theory. The plaintiff's counsel would likely need to plead indirect mechanisms of influence—internal politics, deal-team selection, mentoring relationships, after-hours culture—rather than direct supervisory authority. Second, venue and conduct: Hajdini's lawyers' categorical statement that she has "never even been to the location" of the alleged assault is unusually specific. If true and provable, it supplies a discrete factual disprovable: location records, electronic check-ins, transit data, building access logs, contemporaneous communications. If false or partial, it would damage the defence's broader credibility.

Third, investigation cooperation: JPMorgan's public claim that Rana "refused to participate" in its internal probe will, in litigation, become a key piece of evidence on whether the bank acted in good faith under New York State Human Rights Law and analogous federal rules. Plaintiff's counsel will likely respond that pre-litigation refusal does not waive Title VII or state-law protections, and that an employer's investigation cannot be permitted to substitute for a judicial fact-finding process. The fight over that record could itself shape settlement leverage.

Why this story matters beyond the people involved

The Lorna Hajdini matter sits in a particular niche of post-#MeToo workplace litigation that the legal-press has been quietly tracking for several years: lawsuits in which a male plaintiff accuses a female senior executive of sexual misconduct, often in a financial-services workplace. Substantively, the standards of proof and the legal frameworks are gender-neutral. Procedurally and culturally, defenders and plaintiffs have noted that public, employer and media responses sometimes diverge from default treatments of gender-reversed cases—in both directions, depending on the specific facts and the credibility of the parties.

This case—because of the procedural withdrawal, the bank's public contestation, the defendant's categorical denial, the alleged-victim's reported settlement-attempt and employment timeline, and the deactivation of public social profiles after unmasking—has already become a reference point that observers across employment-law, financial-services compliance and corporate-communications practice are tracking. Cravath, Davis Polk, Paul Weiss and other major firms with leveraged-finance clients are reportedly examining how JPMorgan handled the public posture for lessons applicable to their own institutional clients.

What to watch over the coming weeks

Three signals will determine how this case evolves. First, whether the complaint is refiled in New York County Supreme Court with substantive amendments, or quietly abandoned. A refiling under the plaintiff's legal name, rather than the John Doe pseudonym originally used, would be a major development. Second, whether JPMorgan brings any defamation, malicious-prosecution or fee-shifting counterclaim or response on Hajdini's behalf—an approach increasingly favoured by employer-defence counsel when an employer is confident the underlying claim lacks merit. Third, whether either side moves the dispute toward confidential arbitration, which JPMorgan's employment agreements have historically used as the default forum for harassment and discrimination claims, before this case became viral on social media.

Until any of those happens, the verifiable facts are limited: a complaint was filed on April 27 in New York County Supreme Court; it was returned for correction within days and is no longer publicly available; the named defendant categorically denies all allegations; the employer says its internal investigation found no merit; the plaintiff was identified by reporting outlets after pseudonymous filing and had left his subsequent Bregal Sagemount role on April 2, 2026; the parties did not share a direct reporting line; and no court has yet ruled on the merits of any element of the dispute.

Bottom line

This is a contested workplace-harassment lawsuit against a JPMorgan Chase executive, currently in an unusual procedural posture: filed, viralised, withdrawn for correction and publicly disputed by both the bank and the defendant. The named executive denies the conduct alleged; the employer's internal investigation concluded there was no merit; the plaintiff has been identified and his timeline has come under public scrutiny. No court has tested any of these claims yet. The story is consequential because JPMorgan, financial-services HR and compliance professionals, employment-law specialists and employees at large institutions are now using it as a live case study on internal-investigation protocols, employer public-response posture, the role of social-media amplification before adjudication, and the procedural mechanics of pseudonymous filings in the New York County Supreme Court. The legal substance will hinge on whether—and how—the complaint is refiled in the days and weeks ahead.