6 held for Manesar unrest, police say accused planned commission racket

Suspects used WhatsApp to incite workers, sought cuts post wage hike; insider shared factory inputs, 61 arrested in wider case.

Five of the six suspects arrested for allegedly attempting to incite violence during a wage hike protest in IMT Manesar in Gurugram were unemployed and had planned to collect commissions from workers after a pay hike, police said on Tuesday.

(Representative image) Police try to pacify the workers’ agitation on Thursday at Sector 7, IMT Manesar. (Parveen Kumar/HT)

Crime branch officials said the five accused were linked to a workers’ union active in Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh and had been living on rent in Manesar for the past few months. Investigators said they created three WhatsApp groups comprising workers from factories of a garment manufacturing and export firm in IMT Manesar soon after employees of an automobile manufacturing firm secured a wage hike following their April 2 strike.

A senior police officer said the groups were named after plot numbers where the factories are located. “The workers of the respective factories were added in the groups in which these five suspects were posting messages to provoke them for violence and for targeting the top management officials of the factories. They had planned to take commission from the workers after the wage hike,” the officer said.

Police said the sixth accused was employed at one of the factories and provided internal information to the others while also attempting to instigate co-workers through the groups.

Virender Saini, assistant commissioner of police (Manesar), said the accused avoided physical presence at protest sites on April 8 and 9. “They were only coordinating from the backgrounds via WhatsApp,” he said.

Mukesh Kumar, assistant commissioner of police (crime-II), said incriminating chats were recovered from the accused persons’ mobile phones. “These are strong evidence against them. These phones were seized from them after their arrest on Monday. These suspects could not get their plan executed as police removed the workers from all the protesting spots on April 9 soon after they got violent at two locations and attacked us,” he said, adding that he had called for reinforcement after sensing escalation at the sites.

Police said a total of 61 people have been arrested in connection with the violence during the April 9 protest in IMT Manesar, including 11 booked for attempted murder and six for incitement.