Sacked workers of Maruti-Suzuki India Ltd, Manesar, and their family members held a public hearing at Jantar Mantar here on Friday.

At the hearing, family members of the arrested workers spoke about the difficult circumstances they were passing through since the violent incident in the factory premises of July 18, 2012, in which a manager was killed.

Around 2,500 workers, including 546 permanent workers, were dismissed, 213 workers have been charged with murder under Section 302 and 148, and arrest warrants have been issued against another 64.

After hearing the testimony, the jury of the Jan Sunwai, which included economist Prabhat Patnaik and senior lawyer, Kirti Sngh, concluded that charging 147 workers under Section 302 of the IPC for the alleged murder of one person “defies all credibility.”

The jury’s report noted that there has “obviously been no proper investigation of the case on the basis of which these workers have been arrested and charged” adding that those who had been arrested, had been kept in jail for over a year, which was a “gross violation of their human rights.”

They report said these workers had not been granted parole even in cases where established legal precedent showed that they should have been. “Even the death of near and dear ones in the family have not got those arrested parole to attend their funerals; and even the birth of a child has not earned them parole. The legal provision of bail too has been systematically denied to them.”

Noting that the entire conflict had arisen because the workers wanted to form a union of their own, the jury said “it is their right to form such a union and the company’s denying them this basic and democratic right was unacceptable.”

Meanwhile, the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union’s provisional committee, said in a release claimed that “all the workers were dismissed without giving them any opportunity to defend…Many of those who are in jail were not even present in the plant on July 18.”

They said after the July 18 incident, the Chairman of MSIL, R.C. Bhargava, had said that in future there would be no recruitment on contract basis.

“At present, there are 70 per cent contract workers in MSIL Manesar and only 30 per cent are permanent. Contract workers are employed only for 6 months and they are paid much less (Rs 8,500) in comparison to permanent workers (Rs 25,000-30,000). Also, while number of workers has decreased, the work load has increased,” they alleged.

  aditi.n@thehindu.co.in

Related Topics