Updated: December 18, 2015 23:05 IST

The saga of jailed Maruti Suzuki workers

G. Sampath

It all began on that fateful day, July 18, 2012, when violence broke out at
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.s (MSIL) Manesar plant, leaving an HR manager
dead and about 40 executives injured. The police arrested 147 workers
and charged all of them with murder, arson and rioting. File Photo: AP
Study of 8,000 workers had found trade unionism was on the wane among
new generation of blue collar workers
Earlier this month, the media reported a new survey jointly conducted by
the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the financial advisory firm
Deloitte. The study, conducted among 8,000 workers, had found that
trade unionism was on the wane among the new generation of blue collar
workers.

Apparently, over 60 per cent of workers in the age group of 20 to 35

choose to stay away from the collective bargaining mechanisms that
unions offer.
Scanning this report in the premises of the Gurgaon District and Sessions
Court, sitting amid family members of former Maruti workers, the findings
seem surreal. All 147 of the arrested workers without exception are
between the age group of 20 and 35 years. The youngest is 20 and the
oldest is 34 in the language of the CII-Deloitte study, they would be Gen
Y. And if they all went to jail, it is precisely for union-related activity, real
or imputed.
The fathers
The trial has been going on three years. It all began on that fateful day,
July 18, 2012, when violence broke out at Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.s (MSIL)
Manesar plant, leaving an HR manager dead and around 40 executives
injured.
The police arrested 147 workers and charged all of them with murder,
arson and rioting. While 113 were released on bail earlier this year, 34 are
still in jail. This Monday morning, not far from us, in Court No. 3, trial
proceedings are in progress.
Can you please give me one other example just one of a case where
147 men are charged with one mans murder? asks Satbir Singh.
Mr. Satbir is a stocky man in his early fifties. He runs a small business as a
gemstone dealer. He is the father-in-law of accused no. 121 Sumit Nain.
The boy did not have a father or mother. He had no family, no land,
nothing. I got my only daughter married to him because he had a job at
Maruti, he says.
The court complex is milling with lawyers in their penguin attire, cops in
their khakis, tense litigants, and family members of undertrials.
On the walls of the corridor are signs in black lettering urging cleanliness:
It is a Temple of Justice. Keep it Clean, says one. A young cop strolls past
with a prisoner, hand in hand, fingers interlocked. Had he been a woman
and not a cop, they might have passed for a romantic couple.
Beside the circular pink building that held the courts is a sort of a mandi
where advocates, notaries, photocopiers, and typists peddle their wares.
The lawyers chambers are on the other side of this quasi-juridical bazaar.
Then theres the parking lot, a canteen, and tea joints where lawyers
gossip, strategise, and unwind after tense moments in the courtroom. A
man commits a double murder; he is out on bail in 15 days, says Jagbir
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Singh, a farmer from Samalkha and father of accused No. 8, Anand. My

son has been in jail for three years, repeatedly denied bail. His only crime?
Being a Maruti worker.

Versions of events
While there is more than one version of what happened that day, the
dominant narrative is the one put out by the Maruti management. It is a
typical horror story of militant trade unionism gone wild, and is the basis
for the prosecution.
According to this version, disciplinary action taken by a supervisory staff
against a worker provoked the unionised workers to retaliate. A large
number of them armed themselves with rods and door beams and
attacked management staff, burning one of them to death.
The incident, as per this account, was the culmination of rising militancy
after an independent union, the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU),
was formed by the workers in March 2012. Maruti responded by firing 546
permanent workers and 1,800 contract workers.
The workers tell a different story. A small group of the dismissed workers
formed a Provisional Working Committee (PWC) of the MSWU to fight the
court battle on behalf of their former colleagues in jail. In October 2012,
they filed a counter-case against the Maruti management with the Judicial
Magistrate First Class, Gurgaon.
According to this complaint, the entire incident was a conspiracy hatched
and implemented by the company management with the twin objective of
eliminating the lone management executive instrumental in getting the
Maruti Union registered (Awanish Kumar Dev), and ridding the company of
all the workers active in union-related mobilisation. The counter-case
alleges that bouncers in Maruti workers uniforms were inside the
company premises that morning, and that it was they who started the
violence and rioting, carried Dev inside a room, beat him up, locked him
in, and set fire to the room.

Filing delay
This counter-case was dismissed by the judicial magistrate, on the
grounds that it was filed too late, and therefore, an afterthought. Says
Monu Kuhar, defence counsel of the workers, We could not file our case
earlier because mass arrests of workers was going on.
There was panic among them and their families. It was difficult to even
locate them, let alone talk to them. So why havent they appealed
against this dismissal? We would like to take it to the High Court, says
Mr. Kuhar. But we havent so far due to lack of resources.
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Speaking of resources, the Haryana government had hired the high profile
Supreme Court lawyer KTS Tulsi as special public prosecutor for this case
and paid him Rs. 5.5 crore despite being advised against it on account
of the heavy expenditure.
Says Mr. Jagbir: In a poor country like India, the state has no money for
the poor, but it has all the money to spare when it comes to fighting a
case against workers and on behalf of a multinational company.
Mr. Jagbirs son Anand had been working at Marutis Manesar plant for
about 18 months when it all went horribly wrong. The cops knocked on
our door one night, around 1 a.m., and took him away, recalls Mr. Jagbir.
They say they found a rod, used as a weapon, from his rented
accommodation in Gurgaon. But my son had vacated that place three
months earlier. Even the landlord is ready to say this on record. This is just
a conspiracy, as a result of which our children are trapped jail.
(to be continued)
Keywords: Maruti Suzuki workers, blue collar workers, Confederation of
Indian Industry

Part 2

Updated: December 19, 2015 22:41 IST

The saga of jailed Maruti Suzuki workers

One of its attractions is the opportunity to do a 1-year apprenticeship at a

factory. This apprenticeship was a win-win: the student gets valuable work
experience, and the company gets cheap labour.
We are neither permanent workers nor temporary workers. We had
nothing to do with the union.
The first of the jailed workers I meet at the Gurgaon District and Sessions
Court is Raj Kishen, a chubby, soft-spoken young man in his mid-twenties.
He looks distracted, a bit lost, more Joseph K than the stereotype of a
militant worker. I ask about the charges against him. He rattles off some
numbers, 302, 147, 148, 149, 452, 307, 436, 332, 353, 114, 381, 382
These are sections of the Indian Penal Code. There are supposed to be 18
of them, he says. But he could remember only 12.
Mr. Kishen, like the vast number of non-permanent workers at Marutis
Manesar plant, is an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) product. The 2-year
Mechanic Motor Vehicle course is a much sought after one. One of its
attractions is the opportunity to do a 1-year apprenticeship at a factory.
This apprenticeship was a win-win: the student gets valuable work
experience, and the company gets cheap labour. (Mr. Kishen said he was
paid Rs. 6,000 a month by Maruti.)
Mr. Kishen finished his 2-year course at ITI, Hassangarh, and joined
Marutis Manesar plant as an apprentice in 2011. He worked on the
chassis line. His job was to inspect and mark the exhaust pipe and brake
switch of the Maruti Swift hatchback. I worked on 450-480 cars a day, we
had about 50 seconds per car, he says.
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Career trajectory
Mr. Kishens erstwhile prison companion, Satish Kumar, is a slender young
man with a thick voice. His career trajectory is similar to Mr. Kishens,
except that he was an apprentice from ITI, Rohtak. I worked in B-plant,
fitting latches and glass on the rear doors of Maruti Swift, says Mr. Kumar.
I did around 450 cars a day.
Both Mr. Kishen and Mr. Kumar had started working at Maruti around the
same time. We had less than one month of our apprenticeship left, says
Mr. Kumar. Why would we get involved in this trouble? I ask them if they
would have got an increment, or become permanent workers if they had
managed to complete their apprenticeship. No, says Mr. Kumar. We
would have been dismissed. Instead of a job, they would have received a
certificate from Maruti stating they had done their apprenticeship at its
Manesar plant. We are neither permanent workers nor temporary
workers. We had nothing to do with the union. We were not even present
where this incident happened. We are just apprentices, says Kumar. Why
were we arrested? Why are we on trial?

Plant A
So what did they see that night? I came to know about it only after it was
all over, Mr. Kumar says. I was working in B-plant. Everything happened
in A-plant. There was an announcement asking everybody to move out.
When I came out, I saw police vans approaching. Everybody was running. I
also ran. I flagged down a Suzuki Powertrain bus to take a lift. The police
stopped the bus at Farrukhnagar and arrested all the workers wearing a
Maruti uniform I was one of them.
Mr. Kishen has a similar story. I didnt even know I would be arrested until
I was, he says. At first, I was told Id be let off after questioning. But they
put my name on the charge sheet, and kept me in jail for more than two
years.
I ask them about their days in jail, and for the first time, Mr. Kishens face
becomes animated. I was home sick, he says. I missed my mother and
brothers. I spent many days crying.

Prison food
Mr. Kishen and Mr. Kumar seem traumatised by the prison food. They cant
stop talking about it. The rotis were either uncooked, half-cooked or
burnt, says Mr. Kishen. They had hair, jute fibre, and God knows what
else in them. The dal was so watery you could not find a particle of dal in
it. Mr. Kumar takes over: We thought the cooks had undergone special
training to prepare bad prison food. Not even animals would eat it. Then
how did you manage, I ask. Even in prison, we were spending Rs. 8,0006

10,000 a month from our own pocket, says Mr. Kumar. Thats how we
managed.
Though both got bail in March this year, they have to keep marking
attendance at the Gurgaon District and Sessions Court. Neither have been
able to land a job. I tried at Hero Honda in Gurgaon, I tried at H&G, I have
also tried at a couple of other places. Everywhere they see the case
against me and turn me down, says Mr. Kumar.
Mr. Kishen is despondent. Zindagi barbaad kardi hamari toh [They have
ruined my life], he says. Two years of my ITI have gone waste. My one
year apprenticeship has gone waste. Two years wasted in jail. One year
wasted looking for a job. I have been robbed of six years of my life.
A crowd of black coats swarm out of Court No 3. The hearing is over.
Workers families and a handful of scribes scamper to have a word with
the defence counsel, Vrinda Grover. Certain aspects of the defence have
not been put to the prosecution witnesses. she says. So we have moved
an application for recall of some of the prosecution witnesses.
Both Mr. Jagbir and Mr. Satbir have some questions about their wards bail
plea. Will they get bail any time soon? When will this case end? Can they
really hope for justice? But their lawyers have no definite answers to give
them. Koi guarantee nahi hai, says Mr. Kuhar, rather brutally. He reminds
the two fathers that a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had
cited investor sentiment as a factor for his rejection of the bail plea. The
judge had observed, The incident is most unfortunate occurrence which
has lowered the reputation of India in the estimation of the world. Foreign
investors are not likely to invest the money in India out of fear of labour
unrest.
Mr. Satbir shakes his head. Is foreign investment more important than
justice? he wants to know. My boy rots in jail for three years so that my
country doesnt scare away foreign investors. They call this the temple of
justice. We can all see what kind of temple this is.

Another setback
On December 16, in another setback for the workers, the trial court
dismissed their defence counsels application for recall of prosecution
witnesses.
Keywords: Maruti Suzuki workers, Gurgaon District and Sessions Court