On-the-spot report from India
Maruti Suzuki worker condemns court verdict as “pre-determined”
By
our correspondents
16 June 2017
A World Socialist Web Site reporting team travelled to Delhi, India’s capital, 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.
On March 18, a Gurgaon district court judge condemned 13 autoworkers 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 13 workers jailed for life include the entire 12-member executive committee of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU), which was formed in 2011-12 in a rank-and-file rebellion against the plant’s pro-company, state-supported union.
The Indian ruling elite is determined to make an example of the Maruti Suzuki workers to intimidate the working class and demonstrate to foreign investors that they can be counted on to ruthlessly suppress all worker resistance to brutal exploitation.
In explaining why he had urged the 13 workers be sentenced to death by hanging at their March 17 sentencing hearing, Anurag Hooda , the special prosecutor appointed by the Haryana state government, declared, “ Our industrial growth has dipped, FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] has dried up. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is calling for ‘Make in India,’ but such incidents are a stain on our image.”
The corporate-controlled media in India and the major trade union federations have maintained a virtual blackout…