I had joined a new company very recently, on the 23rd of May. The terms and conditions of the offer letter were that I am to be paid a sum of 35,000 rupees during my probation period for a period of two or three months (depending on my performance), after which my final CTC will be decided. Though my employers had verbally communicated to me that my final CTC would be 8 lpa, they did not state it explicitly in the offer letter. For termination of employment, they terms and conditions were that I am to serve a notice period of 45 days, and if I fail to do so, I need to pay 45 days salary. No explicit mention of termination of employement during probation period has been made.
When I had joined, I was oblivious to the work environment that prevails there. It's the CEO who decides the deadlines there for technical projects, despite the fact that he is not competent to do so, and comes up with infeasible timelines. He misbehaves with his employees, often venting out on them. We had six working days every week. The project they assigned to me was of a highly non-trivial nature requiring specalised skills, and I was offered a deadline of less than two weeks to bring it to completition. Naturally, I was highly dissatisfied, since I was underpaid during the probation period and they had assigned to me work that hardly some trainee gets assigned, and they wished that I complete it in 1/4 of the period of my probation.
I resigned on 1st June, citing to the CEO that I am doing so for personal reasons. Also, that I am finding it difficult to commute four hours everyday to go to work. I did not wish to be rude or belligerent, so I did not state my actual reasons for resigning to him.
The CEO replied to me, roughly, "Thank you very much for resigning, please let me know the date at which you shall be paying penalty to the company". To this I responded that I have been in the company only for a week now, have not taken any salary until now, and that I am in probation. I won't be paying a penalty". To this, he responded that, roughly "Probation or not, I have to nonetheless pay the penalty. It's expensive to hire an employee, and the company takes this very seriously." He assured me that he shall take action againt me for this breach of contract.
To be honest, I have had significant expenses to commute to my workplace for the one week I worked there. Besides that, I had also completed a task that had been pending there form March. I did not ask them from my side for any salary for the same, but just wanted to resign without any conflicts and find a better place to work in. The company has not paid me any relocation bonus etc. They don't even have my salary account details yet.
They had me sign another NDA, and I handed over all company assets.
After all this, I have been thinking in terpidation if I have broken the law.
My question are
1. Is it necessary for me to pay 45 days worth of salary?
2. Have I broken the law?
3. Are there any laws that grant me the liberty to work where I wish to, and if certain terms and conditions directly contradict my liberty to work, then such terms and conditions are not legally binding?
