On-the-Spot from New Delhi
Lawyer for Maruti Suzuki workers denounces frame-up
By
our correspondents
21 June 2017
A World Socialist Web Site reporting team travelled to India’s capital, New Delhi, and the nearby Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt last month to speak with those fighting to overturn the frame-up convictions and brutal sentences imposed on militant workers at the Maruti Suzuki car assembly plant in Manesar, Haryana.
In March, thirteen autoworkers were sentenced to life in prison on trumped-up murder charges, arising from a July 18, 2012 company-provoked, factory floor altercation and fire in which a company manager died from smoke inhalation. Another 18 workers were given three–to five-year prison terms on lesser charges.
The reporting team met with Rebecca John, a senior advocate and one of the Maruti Suzuki workers’ lead lawyers. As they entered her office in Defence Colony, New Delhi, John was making final corrections on an appeal of the workers’ convictions. That appeal has now been filed at the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh.
John expressed confidence that the appeal will be successful, noting that at the original trial the defence demonstrated that the police had fabricated evidence and colluded with management and that the prosecution’s case was otherwise full of inconsistencies and evidentiary holes.
“Out of 148 workers,” said John, “117 were acquitted. That itself is a great victory. Because it shows that there was a frame-up. The police were not looking for individual suspects. They were only interested in rounding up as many workers as possible.
“If in a case where 148 were put on trial, 117 are acquitted, I would say that the foundation on which the case is based has collapsed.”
John…