By Abhishek Jha for Youth Ki Awaaz:
18 more workers of the Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant were granted bail on August 11 by a Gurgaon sessions court in the matter of the July 2012 unrest at the factory. Each worker now needs to furnish two sureties of Rs. 2 lakh each. A senior executive at the automobile factory had died following a fire that broke out there during clashes between the workers and the management. 147 workers had been arrested after the incident.
Most of the workers arrested were granted bail only last year after the Supreme Court granted bail to two workers. The bail plea for 19 workers had been moved after the Supreme Court granted bail to another worker, Amit Nain, on July 1 on the grounds that trial had been stayed and the future of the case was uncertain. Of the 19 workers, the bail plea for Yogesh, a former member of the Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Union, was rejected by the Court. 102 witnesses have testified so far in the case without a single worker being convicted, while the defence lawyers maintain that most workers have been falsely implicated.
Sumit Nain, a former permanent employee at the plant, was also granted bail on July 21 by a trial court in Gurgaon, Khushi Ram, General Secretary of the Workers Solidarity Centre and another former employee, told YKA. This was his second bail plea, the earlier one in 2015 being rejected by the sessions court as well as the High Court of Punjab and Haryana.
Sixteen more workers, including 12 members of the Union, which the workers had constituted in March 2012 after strikes starting June 2011, continue to be in jail. The father of the former General Secretary of the Union Sarabjit Singh, who is in jail, had told YKA last month that with a working member of the family in jail for four years now, they experienced financial troubles.
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