[Reader-list] The ABC of labour unrest at Manesar plant

Thu Aug 7 02:58:12 CDT 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/the-abc-of-labour-unrest-at-manesar-plant/article6289585.ece#.U-MtGjfV3uQ.gmail
PaperMANESAR (HARYANA), August 7, 2014The ABC of labour unrest at Manesar
plant

Anumeha Yadav

inShare
1 <http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article6289585.ece#>
[image: Families and colleagues of jailed Maruti workers marching to
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's residence in Rohtak on
August 3 were stopped by the police.- Photo: Anumeha Yadav]
Families and colleagues of jailed Maruti workers marching to Haryana Chief
Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's residence in Rohtak on August 3 were
stopped by the police.- Photo: Anumeha Yadav

The case against 89 of the 147 workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited
(MSIL), accused of rioting in the company’s Manesar plant on July 18, 2012,
could turn out to be an alphabet soup of sorts. The workers are lodged in
Haryana’s Bhondsi jail for the past two years in connection with the
violent labour unrest that caused the death of Awanish Kumar Dev, a manager
at the plant.

The police claim four contractors who supply workers to Maruti witnessed
the rioting as they were at the plant at the time. But going by the
testimonies of the four witnesses, the alleged rioters ganged up in
alphabetical order before going on the rampage.

Court documents show witness Virendra alias Rajender Yadav as having seen
25 workers indulge in arson at the factory, their names falling in the
alphabetical range of A-G. Another witness, contractor Yaad Ram, has
testified against 25 workers whose names are in G-P category.

A third witness, Ashok Rana, had named 26 workers whose names are in the
P-S alphabet range. The last witness, Rakesh of Tirupati Associates, which
has supplied 900 contract workers to MSIL, has claimed to have seen 13
workers whose names, continuing the alphabetic sequence, are in the S-Y
range.

These four witnesses, however, failed to identify any of the 89 workers
named by them in the district court on July 5.

“The (Maruti) management had originally named 52 persons in the FIR, mostly
from the workers’ union body. The police picked up another 100 workers over
the next two-three weeks and assigned 89 names alphabetically to the labour
contractors with there being no other witnesses. They did not produce any
witness at all against another 11 workers,” said defence counsel R.S. Hooda
commenting on the evidence against 100 of the 147 workers.

The incident on July 18, 2012 was preceded by months of strikes by the
workers demanding an independent union in 2011 that had caused a loss of
over Rs. 2,500 crore to MSIL, India’s largest automobile manufacturer.

Special Public Prosecutor KTS Tulsi declined to comment on the pattern of
the testimonies. Witness Virendra alias Rajender Yadav told The Hindu that
his firm VGR Engineer Pvt. Ltd. supplied 700 workers to the Manesar plant
in July 2012, and at present, it supplied 600 workers to Maruti’s Gurgaon
plant. In all, 147 workers have been charged on 18 counts, including
rioting, and under Section 302 of the IPC for murder of Mr. Dev. On
Thursday, these workers will be waiting patiently for the decision of
Punjab and Haryana High Court on bail pleas moved by two of them.
Date: 5 August 2014
Subject: Those Men Of Manesar | Pavithra S. Rangan

http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Those-Men-Of-Manesar/291560#.U-DevDC31Ik.gmail

Business <http://www.outlookindia.com/section.aspx?secid=18>Magazine | Aug
11, 2014 <http://www.outlookindia.com/content.aspx?issue=11306>

controversy: maruti murder
Those Men Of Manesar
<http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Those-Men-Of-Manesar/291560>
Some 147 workers, arrested after the 2012 Maruti plant violence and death,
are still languishing in jail. Why can’t they get bail?
Pavithra S. Rangan
<http://www.outlookindia.com/people/1/Pavithra-S-Rangan/15908>

‘*Jo mann se hara, woh hara. Jo mann se jeeta, woh jeeta*’ (One who loses
heart, loses everything. One who is strong, wins), reads a white board on
the wall of a freshly painted small conference room of a modest private
company in Gurgaon. The woman in crisp brown cotton salwar and black
dupatta purses her lips. She’s in distress, her eyes are red as she tries
to hold back the tears.

Sushma’s husband is one of the 147 workers of Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant
who have been in jail for two years now, charged with murder, rioting and
criminal conspiracy following the death of HR manager Awanish Kumar Dev in
a fire on July 18, 2012, the result of a violent clash between workers and
security guards. Special public prosecutor K.T.S. Tulsi says the
prosecution hopes to complete examining of witnesses in August. “It is the
media that is to blame,” exclaims Sushma. “Did they once give thought to
why 147 poor workers would come together to kill one man?” she asks.

The workers have always claimed that they had been fond of the deceased
Awanish. He was apparently sympathetic to the workers’ cause and his
relations with workers were very cordial, *Outlook* was told. They had no
reason to kill him. So, was it just an accident? And if it was indeed
murder, could anyone else have had an interest in eliminating him? The
question has not even been addressed by the Haryana police.

Attempts to get in touch with family members of Awanish proved futile. A
Maruti official told *Outlook* over the phone that the company had no
information about their whereabouts and weren’t even sure if they still
lived in the Delhi-NCR anymore. Surely there would be colleagues and
friends of the deceased who would have some information? The queries were
stonewalled.

“The judiciary is biased, 100 of the arrested are casual workers, with no
union connections. Why would they join the violence?”Rajender Pathak,
Defence lawyer

With the chargesheet already filed, and the investigation complete, lawyers
say there is no reason for the workers to be still in jail. “The Punjab and
Haryana HC stated extraneous reasons of a possible impediment in foreign
investment for not granting bail. This is extremely unfortunate,” says the
defence lawyer in the high court, Vrinda Grover. While the SC held that
eyewitnesses have to be examined before bail is granted, Grover says the
prosecution has deliberately withheld eyewitnesses to prolong the case.
“Another bizarre occurrence is the sequence in which four witnesses zeroed
in on the accused. They have been identified in alphabetical order! Can any
judge believe that in a situation of rioting a witness will notice people
in alphabetical order? These are clearly false witnesses, the names have
been written up from the muster rolls. It’s shocking that this does not
alarm a court,” Grover says.

While bail has been granted to the accused even in cases like the 2013
Muzaffarnagar riots (death toll 62) and the 2G spectrum scam, the failure
in securing bail for even one of the 147 Maruti workers is seen as a sign
of the clout the company enjoys in Gurgaon and over the police and the
judiciary. “It’s impossible for them to secure justice, unless this case is
transferred to Delhi. The police too are agents of the company,” says Colin
Gonsalves, a senior counsel in the SC and rights activist.

Families of several accused claim many of the jailed workers were not even
at the plant the day the violence erupted. Two boys, Iqbal and Surender,
were on leave and did not even go to the plant that day. “Nearly 15 boys
were picked up from their rooms in Aliardhanda, a village near Manesar.
They were on night shift and their work was to begin at midnight,” says
Mahabir, a member of the provisional union of Maruti Suzuki workers, formed
after all the members of the former union were put behind bars.

Families of over 10 jailed workers say appointment letters from the company
asking them to return to work (when the plant resumed production a month
after the violence) had arrived after the arrests. “Even the management
doesn’t seem to know who was arrested and why. Several of those who were in
uniforms were randomly picked up from the street,” says Dayaram, father of
arrested Narender (30), whose traumatised wife is now undergoing
psychiatric treatment in a private hospital in Gurgaon.

The defence counsel points to several aberrations that have surfaced in the
course of the trial, which leave several questions unanswered. The violence
took place in the evening, nearly 12 hours after an altercation between one
of the managers and a worker, Jia Lal. (Lal was apparently abused when he
protested against an official briefing during their seven-and-a-half minute
tea break that morning.)

While the post-mortem report of the deceased manager says the death was
caused due to shock and asphyxiation, defence lawyer Rajender Pathak argues
that it’s nigh impossible for the workers to have started a fire, as they
are thoroughly checked for any items like matchboxes, lighters and
cigarettes before they enter the factory, as per a standing order issued by
Maruti and approved by the Haryana government. “It is only the top
management that is allowed to carry lighters or matchboxes,” says Pathak.
Prosecution witness and chief of plant operations, Vikram Khazanchi,
accepted in court that officers were allowed to smoke within the factory
premises. He, however, denied that workers were frisked before they entered
the factory.

“How can witnesses identify the accused in alphabetical order, that too in
a riot situation? It’s clear they are false witnesses.”Vrinda Grover,
Defence lawyer

What arouses further suspicion is that a police contingent, summoned by the
Maruti management in anticipation of violence, was present outside when the
incident happened. The statement of Narendra Kumar, asi of the Gurgaon
police station then, says the plant security in-charge Capt Deepak Anand
had asked him not to send the police inside. When Khazanchi was asked by
the court if the security in-charge had been indicted for the lapses and
violence, he admitted in court that no action was taken against him. It
does beg an explanation on why the management, which claims to have
suffered a loss of Rs 500 crore (and according to the defence team duly
recovered the amount from insurance companies), took no action against the
person who was directly responsible for security.

Defence lawyer Pathak says, “The judiciary is biased. Nearly 100 out of
147 boys arrested were casual workers, who had nothing to do with the
union. Demands raised by the union would have in no way affected their
salaries or leave. Why would they join the violence?”

The situation had been simmering for a while and it had to do with
payments. All permanent workers in the plant at the time received their
salary in two parts—a fixed component of Rs 8,000 and a variable component
of Rs 7,000, called the Production and Performance Reward System (PPRS).
“If a worker took an unplanned leave for a day, Rs 1,300 was deducted from
the PPRS. If we took two, we would lose Rs 3,000, on taking more than three
leaves, we would be denied the entire Rs 7,000,” explains Mahabir.

Maruti Suzuki, meanwhile, has moved on. Its net profit for the year 2012-13
stood at Rs 23,921 million. Even more ironically, it declared a dividend of
160 per cent compared to 150 per cent in the year 2011-12. The family of
Awanish Kumar have either shifted or are behind a cordon. And the Haryana
government has been spending a tidy sum every month to pay high-profile
lawyers and to keep the workers in jail. Some of them are losing their mind
and all of them, in their 20s and 30s, are marked for life.  The maximum
sentence for rioting is three years rigorous imprisonment and/or fine, if
convicted. These young and skilled and semi-skilled workers have been in
prison for two years already. Is this what’s called a black hole?

***

Photographs by Tribhuvan Tiwari

Asha 26
Wife of Kamal Singh (28), permanent worker arrested on July 19, 2012

“He was at home by 6 pm and it takes at least two hours to come from
Manesar to Delhi and the violence erupted at around 7 pm.”

“The last time I saw him was on our wedding anniversary, three months ago.
I wore a new saree and took a new shirt for him. He looked so sick. He had
lost so much weight,” says 24-year-old Asha. “He broke down as soon as he
saw me, saying he couldn’t stay in jail anymore. He asked me to do
something, anything to get him out. But is anything in my hands?” Asha
married Kamal in April 2012. Three months later, her husband, was arrested.
Kamal was on the morning shift, which began at 6:30 am and ended at 3
pm—some three hours before the violence erupted in the Manesar plant.

When the police knocked on their door the next day at six in the morning,
the couple was asleep. “I woke him up and told him some policemen were
asking for him. After 20 minutes of talking, they said they’ll leave him in
two days after the inquiry got over. It’s been two years now,” she says
tears swelling up.

Kamal’s daughter was born in March 2013, seven months after he was
arrested. He’s only seen her thrice. “We call her Deepti because he likes
the name. We haven’t had the naamkaran yet. We will have it as soon as he
is out of jail,” says Asha.

***

Photographs by Tribhuvan Tiwari

Kavita Sundriyal 26
Sister of Amit Prasad (24), casual worker arrested on July 18, 2012

“My brother will come out because he’s innocent. But what about the two
years of his life that’s been wasted? His friends are all doing so well....”

She has asked the constable thrice if the books would reach her brother.
Thrice he has said yes, but the two books, in pink paperback, continue to
lie on the stool beside him. Kavita (26) has just met her brother, Amit
Prasad (24), and assured him that the books for him to learn Japanese would
reach him. “You either have to do some jugaad or pay to get anything done
here. My brother has given money to one of the constables so that he can do
him small favours like this. I can’t find him today,” says Kavita. Amit,
she says, was dragged out of a shared autorickshaw, along with three others
from the plant, all of them in their uniforms. He had completed his morning
shift and had taken the auto to IFFCO chowk in Gurgaon, where he would pick
up his bike from the Maruti parking lot and return home to Delhi.

“The Maruti management said that those who are in jail are dangerous
criminals and hence shouldn’t be let out. Didn’t they check before they
employed them? If all these young boys were really involved, they could
have set fire to the whole plant and killed many more people. Why would
they kill one man?” she asks, fists clenched and her voice quivering. “My
brother will come out because he is innocent. But, what about the two years
of his life that have already been wasted? His friends are all doing so
well in their career; many are getting married. But these boys in jail are
now labelled and this punishment they are undergoing will drive them to
really become criminals,” she adds grimly.

***

Photographs by Tribhuvan Tiwari

Sushma Devi 29
Wife of Sohan Lal (29), permanent worker arrested on July 20, 2012

“He was arrested at my mother’s place in Himachal. But the police report
says they found him in Gurgaon with a rod in his hand.”

“In the FIR there were three Sohans—Sohan Kumar, Sohan Singh and Sohan Lal.
My husband’s name is Sohan Lal; but there were two Sohan Lals in the
company. The one they wanted was a part of the union and has a different
father’s name. My husband’s name was not even in the FIR,” she says.

Dressed in a cotton salwar, vermilion on her forehead and hair neatly tied
in a pony, Sushma (29) is wrapping up her work before she can leave for
home. It is aMonday evening and she has stayed back longer than usual, to
make up for arriving late to office that morning.

She has permission to come an hour late, at the private firm where she
works as a data entry operator, every Monday and Friday when she gets to
meet her husband in jail for 20 minutes at around 9 am. “I was a Hindi
teacher in a government school. I changed jobs a month after my husband
went to jail because I could not go late to school after meeting him,” she
says.

Sohan Lal s/o Trilokchand was arrested on June 20, 2012, from Sushma’s
mother’s house in Himachal Pradesh where she had been since June 16, 2012,
after her miscarriage. Her husband left Gurgaon on June 18 after the
violence took place and joined them in Himachal. “Sometimes I wonder if my
husband’s commited any crime at all. It seems impossible with all the lies
the police have concocted. The police have written in their report that
they found him in Gurgaon with a door beam and a rod in his hand.”
------------------------------

*By Pavithra S. Rangan in Manesar & Gurgaon*
Cl <http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Those-Men-Of-Manesar/291560>