Blacklisted, family in debt, out on bail: The human cost for workers a month after Noida crackdown

A month after worker protests shook Noida’s industrial area, a Provincial Armed Constabulary bus sat parked outside Motherson factory’s Gate 4. Four guards frisked workers in beige uniforms as they walked through the gates. A deputy manager, coming to the entrance to answer questions, was clear: “The protests have had no impact. Everything is the same as before.”

Management’s version of normalcy ends a few kilometres away. At the District and Sessions Court Surajpur, Newslaundry met families of five workers – four men and one woman – who were jailed for over a month before bail was granted. Their names are Sangeeta, Guddu, Prince, Amit, and Gopal. Their bail bonds cost Rs 40,000 each. Their families are now in debt.

People already invisible to the system, now caught inside it.

‘Will not let her work again’

Sangeeta (28) had been working in Noida for eight years. She was arrested on April 13 outside her factory, which Motherson runs.

For the past 19 years, her father, Shravan Singh (57), has worked at a factory that produces steel reinforcement bars (sariya). “We go in the morning and come back at night. I earn Rs 700 per day. So, I earn around Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per month.”  Since Sangeeta’s arrest, much of his daily wage has gone toward court and jail visits, transport, and food.

A resident of Kalyanpuri, Singh and his family had to travel over 40 kilometres to meet their daughter. “I work for 2-3 days before I have enough money to go see her. When we go for mulaqat, we have to spend money there,” he had told Newslaundry before Sangeeta was released. “Sometimes the auto itself takes Rs 300 one way. If the children come too, then it becomes Rs 500-600 for travel alone.”

Inside the jail, Singh said, visitors were not allowed to bring in cooked food, forcing families to buy items from the shops inside the jail complex. “We buy fruits, biscuits and things like that,” he had said. That cost around Rs 600, he said, adding that the family also had to hand over cash to her regularly. “Sometimes Rs 500, sometimes Rs 1,000.”

Sangeeta is back home now. But her mother, Prakash Kaur (52), says she will not let her work again.

“I’m not letting my daughter near Noida again, not after this. She’s learned computers and is educated, but I will not let her go back to Noida. Making matters worse, the company has blacklisted their names and numbers.” On asking what Sangeeta will do in the future, her mother said, “We'll see – get her married. If I tell anyone about this, how embarrassing will it be for us?”

Shravan Singh said that because Sangeeta is a girl, “we didn’t tell anyone”. “Not even my own brother. When people asked where she was, I said she had gone to the village,” he said, adding that he pleaded with officers to release her as there were “talks about her marriage”. “The police didn’t call us. We only found out about her arrest around 4 pm when her friend called and informed her mother. I was on duty at work.”

In jail, her father said, Sangeeta would often ask him, “Papa, when will you get me out?”  

Her father recalled that a lawyer had agreed to help them without charging a fee, though they still had to pay for forms and paperwork. Sangeeta had studied till Class 12, but Singh described himself as “angootha chaap”.

Describing his own life as a daily wage labourer, Singh explained that he spends entire days working in the heat, cutting and handling iron rods at construction sites. “I leave for work in the morning. I work in the sun the whole day. After lunch, I have to cut iron rods. Sparks fly while working,” he said, pointing to his hole-ridden pants.

“We earn in the morning and eat in the evening,” he said. “Look at this body now. All this is from labour.”

According to Singh, Sangeeta earned around Rs 9,000 a month, money that directly supported the household. “She would bring rations home – flour, lentils, oil, household items. It made things a little tension-free,” he said. Along with Singh, his elder son also works to support the family. “He does the same work that I do,” he said. The younger son, he added, only worked occasionally as a painter.

Singh also spoke about the family’s animals, saying they had taken in injured and abandoned pets over the years. “We have two cats and two dogs. Some of them were sick or injured, so we brought them home and got them treated,” he said. Feeding them was another expense the family managed collectively. “Sometimes my son brings meat for them. Sometimes Sangeeta used to bring things for them too,” he said.

‘Everything is finished now’

Guddu’s account begins before the arrests. Inside the factory, about 50 to 100 workers work on a single manufacturing line or belt. Guddu was the leader of one such line. On April 13, he said, he had actually helped police disperse the crowd. “After that, people dispersed and went back home. I was picked up from outside my house,” he said.

Now out on bail after 36 days in jail, Guddu said the jailor had been decent to them. “He protected us. Nobody could beat us or force us to work. He would ask if our families knew about the arrests and even helped some workers contact relatives or get legal aid. We did not face as many problems inside jail as we did outside.”

Outside, the reckoning has been harder. The company says Guddu's arrest means he now has a criminal record and cannot be rehired. He will also not receive gratuity. “Even though there is no kind of evidence against us,” he said. 

He had finished his graduation in History Honours from Magadh University and had been preparing for a government job alongside his work at Motherson. “I was planning to do an MA. But everything is finished now.”

His girlfriend, a 23-year-old current employee at Motherson who asked not to be named, had been making wiring harnesses for cars at the company for nearly three years. She had seen police detain him on April 13. 

“They were saying, ‘We were just standing here, sir, we didn't do anything,’ but the police still took them away,” she said. Over the following month, she went to court seven or eight times and visited him in jail six or seven times. “I spent the last month trying to secure his release. I'm so tired now,” she said. 

She said the financial burden of jail visits and legal expenses had become overwhelming. “I spent nearly Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 on all this,” she claimed, adding that she would give him money because the food in prison was not good. Even phone calls were expensive. “A five-minute call costs Rs 250,” she said. She added that she had also paid lawyers, spent Rs 500 on a vakalatnama, and covered travel, jail tokens, and paperwork during prison visits.

To cover these expenses, she had to borrow money from an uncle who runs a nearby shop. “For every Rs 1,000, we have to pay Rs 50 or Rs 100 as interest. But I’ll pay it off soon, before the interest rises. All my salary will go into this,” she said. She worked extra shifts to cover it, though last month she managed only ten to fifteen days of work and would not receive her full pay. 

She added that her parents know about her friendship with Guddu and are okay with it. “If someone needs help at such a time, why would they scold me for helping?” she said.

‘Poor migrants have been trapped’: Pro-bono advocate

Advocate Vinod Bhatti, who sits at the Sessions and District Court, Surajpur, is handling several of these cases without any charge.

Bhatti said, “In FIR 172, I am the advocate for eight people, who have all been granted bail. In FIR 149, I am the advocate for Shivani and Naushad. The Sessions court has rejected her bail, but Naushad’s bail has been approved. Both of them have also been named in FIR 151, the contents of which are nearly identical.”

“See, all of them were detained under the preventive provisions of BNSS. Serious sections were added later. In some cases, the sections were added a month later,” he said.

Newslaundry accessed three FIRs – FIR 149, 151 and 172 registered at Noida’s Phase-1 and Phase-3 police stations. They invoke near-identical charges related to unlawful assembly, rioting, armed rioting, causing hurt, property damage and provisions of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. 

FIRs 149 and 151 additionally include BNS Section 109, the charge of attempt to murder, a non-bailable offence that can make securing bail significantly more difficult. So far, 33 people have been named in FIR 149, 29 in FIR 151, and 23 in FIR 172. 

Bhatti explained how people were picked up from different spots. “There is one family who was going to drop their child off at school, one person who rides for Rapido, and some were picked up from their house. In Shivani’s case, for example, UP Police went to her house in the evening, but there were no lady officers present. They arrested her like that. The police are not following a single procedure. Whoever came their way was arrested. No one’s family was informed. I met some people who had to look for their family members in four different jails.”

On being asked about evidence, he said, “There is no particular evidence as such. The police are using similar photos of broken glasses and burnt vehicles in different cases. Several photos, I believe, were taken after police took custody and got them photographed holding lathis later.”

“The shocking thing about these cases is that all of them are poor migrants and have gotten trapped in this case. None of them has money or much knowledge of the law. Their only option was to take the little wage from their companies and rely on their mercy. If you raise your voice even a little, then you will be picked up, beaten, and ultimately be indebted without having the possibility of getting your jobs back,” Bhatti added.

“Police have booked people who had nothing to do with it. Many have told me that the police's behaviour has been abysmal. I believe it is because the unrest was perceived as an attack on the police. After all, their informers failed in preventing this,” he said.

“Those granted bail have been asked to deposit Rs 40,000 in the court. Some have submitted FDs, others have put up their property or vehicle papers. If the amount is Rs 35,000, no verification is required. But for Rs 40,000, let’s say someone puts their property papers in, then the patwari and tehsildar will have to issue a report stating that ‘Yes, this person is the owner and owns this much land and can pay the Rs 40,000 bail amount’. For a vehicle’s RC being put up, that will require signatures from the RTO confirming vehicle details,” Bhatti explained.

They are all paying this amount by taking out a loan, either from moneylenders or their extended families, he added.

‘Parents helpless’

Another case is that of Amit Kumar, a 19-year-old worker at Motherson. His neighbour from Prayagraj, 26-year-old Ayodhya Prasad, made nearly 20 trips to court in an effort to secure bail for Amit.

“There may not be a blood relation, but seeing the helplessness of his parents, I had to come,” he told Newslaundry. According to Prasad, Amit was picked up from Sector 5 on the morning after the violence while out having breakfast. 

“We asked the police what evidence they had – if he burned vehicles or was involved in riots. There was no evidence, but they still arrested him,” he alleged. Prasad claimed that Amit had been beaten in custody. “He showed his hands and said he had been beaten a lot. I saw many boys crying when I went to the police station,” he said.

Prasad said the financial burden of repeated court and jail visits had become overwhelming. “One trip itself costs Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,500,” he said, alleging that even money or food sent inside jail rarely fully reaches inmates. 

In a bail order dated May 16 for workers Golu Kumar and Amit Kumar, the Sessions Court in Gautam Buddh Nagar noted that the FIR itself acknowledged the presence of workers from multiple companies at the protest site and said that, at this stage, the available evidence primarily established that the accused were workers present during the agitation. “Merely being part of the crowd cannot automatically mean that the accused shared a serious criminal intention,” the court observed while granting bail.

The court further noted that the prosecution had failed to attribute any “specific, separate or active violent role” to the two accused workers. A failure repeated in several bail orders. It was observed that there was no evidence at this stage showing that they had led the crowd, carried out targeted attacks, or used deadly weapons.

Another friend of Amit, Rohit, alleged that many of the arrested workers had no prior criminal records and had migrated hundreds of kilometres to work in Noida due to financial distress. “Those who are innocent should be released,” he said. 

‘Made to work despite health problems’

Another worker arrested in the aftermath of the violence was 25-year-old Prince Kumar from Bihar’s Sheohar district. But unlike many others named in the FIRs, Prince no longer worked at Motherson.

His elder brother, Shyam Sunder Patel, who works at a garment export company in Noida’s Sector 5, said Prince had previously worked at Motherson for nearly a year before quitting over low wages and long working hours.

On 14 May, the day Newslaundry visited the court, Patel had fallen off his bike in a minor accident. He reached the court late with his foot covered in bandages. “Rs 7,500 was not enough to survive,” Patel said. “They made people work 12-13 hours, sometimes even 16 hours. So he left and started working for Rapido and Zomato with his own vehicle.”

According to Patel, Prince was picked up while standing near a friend’s shop on the day of the violence. “There was a crowd there, and he went to see what had happened,” he said. “The police caught him in the crowd. He resisted and asked why they were arresting him. They told him they would release him in an hour.”

Instead, Patel alleged, Prince was taken to a police station, then a government hospital, and later to Kasna jail. “We got no information from the police,” he said. “We only found out four days later that he had been arrested.”

Patel said he visited the courts and jail repeatedly over the next month while raising funds for legal expenses and bail. “I spent around Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000,” he said. “We don’t have savings. We spend what we earn.”

Like several other families interviewed by Newslaundry, Patel said incarceration itself had become financially devastating. “Every jail visit costs around Rs 1,000,” he said. “Travel, food, money for him inside.”

According to Patel, Prince was also made to work inside jail despite health problems. “Some clean drains, some work in gardens. Prince works in the garden,” he alleged. “He has a hernia and piles. When he works there, the problems become worse.”

Patel also questioned the scale of arrests after the protests. “He had committed no crime,” he claimed. “He was only standing with the crowd. But the police slapped him with 10-12 sections.”

Referring to the workers’ demands, Patel added: “Everything has become expensive. How will people survive on Rs 7,500 or Rs 10,000 a month? If workers cannot raise their demands with companies or the government, to whom will they speak? This is why people sat for a peaceful protest. The stone-throwing did not happen without provocation. It happened only when the police lathi-charged them.”

‘Inmates called them revolutionaries’

For some workers, families bore the burden of securing bail. For Gopal, it was his childhood friend Ayush (25) who had been making the rounds. Gopal finally walked out of jail on May 22.

Ayush, currently a seller on Amazon and Flipkart, said he visited Gopal regularly over the past month. “Every time I go, I give him some money because the diet is not enough – two meals and two snacks a day,” he told Newslaundry.

He said their conversations often turned to life inside. 

“We also talked about the behaviour of other inmates. About 130 of them were jailed together. For the first 14 days, they were all together. Other inmates referred to them as andolanwale or krantikari (protestors or revolutionaries), so they don’t disrespect them or view them as criminals,” he said.

Gopal had worked at Motherson for over four years, earning Rs 10,300 a month with an additional Rs 6,000–7,000 from overtime. His parents had wanted to come, but he asked them to stay away. Now that he is out, the question of what comes next hangs over him.

Newslaundry reached out to Gautam Buddha Nagar Joint Commissioner of Police (Law & Order) Rajeev Narain Mishra for a response to allegations of ill-treatment and custodial violence against the arrested workers. He did not respond to calls. A detailed questionnaire was also sent to the Additional Commissioner of Police and the Deputy Commissioners of Police of Gautam Buddha Nagar. No response had been received at the time of publication. This story will be updated if a response is received.

At the Motherson factory, the guards did not allow anyone entry to meet the higher management. Newslaundry sent a questionnaire to the company seeking their response to allegations by workers. This report will be updated if a response is received.

‘Abandoned and humiliated’

The scale of what had unfolded was not lost on everyone. Labour researcher Rakhi Sehgal had been making rounds between Surajpur court and Kasna jail since the arrests began, trying to connect workers with lawyers and their families.

“The situation seemed out of hand,” Sehgal said. “The police commissioner was already saying 350 workers had been arrested. Given that 55 workers had also been jailed in Manesar earlier, I was worried about how workers would be represented legally if this was going to be the scale of repression.”

Sehgal said many workers’ phones were with the police while several union organisers were either unreachable or under “house arrest”. “Families had not been informed. Some people went to Phase-2 police station, others elsewhere, but workers were scared and nobody knew where people had been taken,” she said.

Over the next few days, Sehgal coordinated with lawyers at Surajpur court to arrange pro bono or low-cost legal assistance. During her repeated visits to Kasna jail, she said she met workers who had been unable to contact their families. “Many of them gave me their family members’ phone numbers to inform them,” she said.

According to Sehgal, workers and their families were often unaware of the legal process itself. “I had to tell some of those detained under Section 151 that they did not need to hire lawyers or pay money immediately,” she said.

Sehgal said she eventually began receiving calls from hundreds of families searching for relatives. “The average income for most workers was around Rs 10,000 to Rs 13,000,” she said. “No labour laws were being implemented properly. Workers feared salary cuts, had no weekly offs, and were already under immense pressure.”

Questioning the official response to the protests, Sehgal said workers had been trying to collectively bargain over their demands for days before the violence broke out. “When workers stood outside factory gates asking HR to listen to them, nobody came – not the companies, not the labour department, not the political establishment. The only front put forward was the police,” she said.

Examining the FIRs, Sehgal mentioned in an article for Scroll that “the state’s failure to implement or revise minimum wages,” “women earning Rs 6,000-Rs 9,000 a month,” or “the LPG crisis does not find mention” in the FIRs. She added that “these omissions are not an oversight. A worker who responds rationally to hunger, fuel poverty, and wage theft is not a rioter. To make her a rioter, you must first make her material conditions invisible. That’s the function of the FIRs.”

According to Sehgal, there were two kinds of frustration that boiled over. 

“One, in phase 2, the police did a lathi charge and hit women. Workers had been standing under the sun for days, so they also picked up stones asking that if they were protesting peacefully then why were they being beaten up. On the other hand, in other sectors, when they were standing outside their factory gates, the company did not let them use the washrooms, provide them with water, or offer medical aid. The girls were fainting, but they did not help. So these workers felt abandoned by the companies that were giving them almost 12 hours a day. They felt humiliated that they were told to leave work if they were not happy. Where could they have gone?”

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