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Corporate India is in shock after a mob of workers bludgeoned to death the
chief executive who sacked them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.
Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano
Transmissioni, a manufacturer of car parts that has its headquarters in
Italy, died of severe head wounds on Monday after being attacked by scores
of laid-off employees, police said. The incident, in Greater Noida, followed
a long-running dispute between the factory’s management and workers
demanding better pay and permanent contracts.
It is understood that Mr Choudhary, who was married with one son, had called a
meeting with more than a hundred former employees who had been dismissed
after an earlier outbreak of violence at the plant. He wanted to discuss a
possible reinstatement deal.
A police spokesman said: “Only a few people were called inside. About 150
people were waiting outside when they heard someone from inside shout for
help. They rushed in and the two sides clashed. The company staff were
heavily outnumbered.”
Other executives said that they were lucky to escape with their lives. “I
locked my door from inside and prayed they would not break in. See, my hands
are trembling even three hours later,” one Italian consultant told
reporters.
More than 60 people were arrested and more than 20 were in hospital yesterday.
A spokesman for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
said: “Such a heinous act is bound to sully India’s image among overseas
investors.”
The murder has stoked fears that outbreaks of mob rule risk jeopardising the
sub-continent’s economic rise. Thousands of violent protesters recently
forced Tata, the Indian conglomerate that owns Land Rover and Jaguar, to
halt work on a plant being built to produce the world’s cheapest car, the
£1,250 Nano. The move could result in £200 million in investment costs being
written off.
Tata stopped work three weeks ago, saying that it could not guarantee its
workers’ safety at the factory in the state of West Bengal. The billionaire
industrialist Mukesh Ambani said that the Nano crisis showed how protesters
were creating “a fear psychosis to slow down certain projects of national
importance”. Other companies, including Vedanta, the London-listed mining
company, have encountered similar problems in India.
In a statement issued from Rivoli,Italy, Graziano said that some of Mr
Choudhary’s attackers had no connection with the company.
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