Maruti eyewitness recalls painful memories of Manesar

The mob fury at India’s largest car maker Maruti's plant left one dead and injured over 90 people. But how and what exactly happened on that fateful day at Maruti plant?

CNBC-TV18’s Mike Sangma gets you the first account of the senior most official who was negotiating with the workers before the violence broke out. The day began as usual at Maruti Suzuki's Manesar plant. But at the conference room, a few union leaders were meeting a senior management team to discuss the reinstatement of one of the workers suspended on disciplinary grounds. Led by CS Raju, the senior-most member of the management, the two sides negotiated for six hours. At 6 o’clock, when the HR team suggested continuing the negotiations the next day, workers turned aggressive and began attacking the management and setting the office on fire. Starting with the senior managers, the mob systematically attacked the management team. A traumatized Raju, nursing a serious backbone injury and a broken neck, recalls the horror. “It was just like a riot, like the one you see in a film, but that is the day I experienced it happening to me,” he said. Raju saved himself by covering his head with the office chair, but his colleague and close friend Avinash Kumar Dev, the HR manager, was killed. While the Gurgaon police claims it was mob fury, Raju says the attacked was planned. “They brought petrol, so it cannot be just mob fury when they attacked people, damaged the camera, computer records and put the office on fire,” he said. While all of the 90 officials admitted to hospital have been discharged, many say the memory of the violence has left them scarred forever.