'Indians dogpiled him': US techie behind 'imagine the smell' comments opens up amid major outrage

Nik Pash, the US techie who drew the wrath of social media after making an apparent comment on Indian techies that they are smelly, has been fired from his company, Cline. Cline founder and CEO Saoud Rizwan initially came to Nik's defence, asserting that the comment was a generic comment on how jampacked hackathon rooms smell and it was not against any race, but he gave in to the social media outrage and announced that Nik Pash was not with the company anymore.

But Saoud Rizwan deleted all his social media posts, including the one announcing that Pash was fired, and cleaned his X account of any posts related to the controversy, while Pash opened up about his firing.


Pash expressed gratitude and love for his team and said no one in his team deserved what happened to them. "I don’t know what will happen next, but I intend for it to resolve positively for everyone involved, most of all my team," Nik Pash wrote without touching the issue of the controversy.

'Indians dogpiled him'

The firing of Nik Pash led to another social media outrage against Indians as they said Nik Pash was fired because of Indian outrage. "Why are we letting these people into our country?" one wrote.







"Is this the first major Indian hate crime hoax? I think so!" another wrote.


Meanwhile, some other Cline members were also called out for racism and many started to threaten to not do business with Cline.


"A few days ago a tweet from our Head of AI offended a lot of people. While I don't believe his original tweet was intended to be offensive, his response refusing to apologize does not reflect my position or Cline's. We recognize that this caused real pain, and that deserves acknowledgement and empathy. He is no longer with Cline. While I disagreed with how he responded, nobody deserves the threats and abuse he's received. Please leave him and his family in peace. To everyone who was hurt by this -- I am sorry," Saoud Rizwan posted; and then deleted -- triggering speculations as to what transpired inside Cline.