YANAM: Weekends in this picturesque enclave of Puducherry within Andhra Pradesh are a time for day-trippers from the Godavari districts to stream in. They come in by the busload Saturdays and head for the beach. This Saturday, however, the streets of this town of 40,000 were deserted with locals staying indoors, still in shock after Friday’s violence at the Regency Ceramics plant where a senior executive was battered to death by workers after a union leader died under lathi blows from the police.Few citizens knew that trouble had been brewing at the Regency Ceramics plant for months preceding the convulsion on Friday. Before Friday, few had heard of the union leader M Murali Mohan, and fewer knew of K C Chandrasekhar, the company’s president (operations).This Saturday, the town still smouldered from the arson of the day before.Smoke still billowed from a school put to the torch in the frenzied arson of Friday, and wrecked buses and vehicles littered the compound.Senior policemen of Puducherry, DIG I D Shukla and Yanam SP S Palanivel (who lives off-site), turned up in town overnight and started an investigation into the deaths of Chandrasekhar and Murali Mohan. They were more forthcoming about the killing of the management man by workers than about the death of the union leader while in their care. After visiting various trouble-spots, they said they have video footage of the killing of Chandrasekhar from which workers involved in the attack would be identified.However, they denied that the police overreacted during Friday’s violence: neither at the plant when police brutally lathicharged union workers led by Murali Mohan at dawn, leading to his death; nor later when they opened fire on workers after the attack on Chandrasekhar, which resulted in bullet injuries to 11 workers.Security guards who had been at the plant’s entry gates shivered as they recalled the sequence of events beginning at first light on Friday.The plant had been having trouble for months with workers trying to organise themselves into a union. With talks going nowhere, the management bused in temporary workers from outside and put them to work in the first shift on Friday which begins at dawn.At about 5.30 a.m on Friday, Murali Mohan, leader of the unrecognised union, led a 100-strong band of workers came to stop the temp workers. With scuffles breaking out at the gate, security guards called in police, who gave free play to their batons.A V V Satyanarayana, general secretary of the Regency Ceramics Officers and Workers Union, recalled that a few blows landed on Murali Mohan and he and his men were bundled up.“It was around 7 a.m when Murali Mohan started complaining of chest pain,” said Satyanarayana.“The policemen brushed it off, joking that it was stunt to avoid a police case. By the time they realised the man was really gasping for breath, it was too late.” He was rushed to hospital, but it was too late.In the meantime at the gates, security guard S Sarma had relaxed, thinking the worst was over. Then at about 8.30 am, Sarma got the fright of his life as he saw a mass of 600 workers bearing down on the gate. “From the mere look of them, I sensed menace. They barged into the premises, and just shoved us aside. We ran for our lives,” he recalled.The workers were unstoppable, tearing down everything in their way, furniture, machinery, vehicles in the compound. Ire still unspent, they turned on educational institutions run by Regency Ceramics, especially its buses. One group suddenly splintered off and barged into the nearby house of the company’s president (operations) K C Chandrasekhar, the man who had been trying to broker a deal between the workers and the management. His wife watched in horror as men armed with sticks and wrenched-off iron rods. They espied Chandrasekhar behind and set upon him. In an instant, the senior manager was felled, bleeding profusely from a head split open.One worker, P Srinivasa Rao, said, “None of us had anything against him. He was doing all he could. I don’t even know who killed him. He was a nice man who helped anybody who sought his help.” Out in the town, the streets were aflame. The workers’ ire went from the school to the police station. This time, the policemen’s batons could not hold them off. Someone opened fire without warning.“The police did not fire warning shots, they just shot at random,” says Satyanarayana, the union member, adding, “Policemen wouldn’t let up pick up the injured. They lay there bleeding for hours after the shooting.” Security guards at the RCL unit said that amid the workers’ rampage, looters got down to work.Some 200 persons of them picked up anything they felt had any value: nuts, bolts, tiles, LPG cylinders.“Some of them went back and brought vehicles to carry away the loot. They didn’t even spare the cattle tethered near the school,” said M Prasad, the school’s security guard.On the day after, Yanam was agog with stories that the rampage and the looting was the work of outsiders. Locals said some 200-300 persons came in from villages around Yanam.“Though they were very angry, the workers would not have resorted to such looting. There was chaos on the street outside my home. I shut the door and stayed in,” said Y Lakshmi, a housewife.“I’ve never seen anything like it in Yanam.”
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