Two days after the company came under fire for discrimination, Airtel Wednesday put out a statement saying events reported have been “untrue and factually incorrect”. The company maintained that its representatives were following a “dutiful course” in their regular work shift and were taught a “harsh lesson” that their religious identities matter.

On Monday, a customer tweeted to Airtel with a complaint, to which its representative, Shoaib, responded. The customer, however, wrote back to the company saying “you’re a Muslim and I have no faith in your working ethics because Kuran may have different version for customer service, thus requesting you to assign a Hindu representative for my request.” She subsequently got a response from a Gaganjot at Airtel.

Several users on social media pulled up the company for condoning racial intolerance. Many questioned why the company did not respond immediately, questioning the complainant’s request for a Hindu representative. Some people even said they would change their service provider due to the incident.

Airtel said its representatives were merely doing their job and trying to solve the service issue but were wrongly targeted for “acceptance of discrimination” and “bowing down to bigotry”. According to the company, Shoaib was busy and the user’s complaint was assigned to the next available representative automatically.

“We did not and we repeat, we DID NOT change the advisor because of the unfathomable request from the said customer. At Airtel, we never have and never will succumb to differentiating on the basis of religion, ethnicity or caste,” the company said in a statement, adding that the world was watching and reading into the incident “from a different lens”.