Murder In Union City

After a six year trial in which 190 witnesses were examined, six people, including two leading industrialists, Moolchand Shah and Chandrakant Shah, were given life sentence by the trial court in Durg. They were also fined Rs 10 lakh each.

Paltan Mallah8212;the hired assasin8212;was sentenced to death. But in 1998, all of them were exonerated by the High Court for lack of evidence.

Says Sudha Bhardwaj, a social activist and lawyer for the trade unionists: 8216;8216;Our struggle for justice is still on.8217;8217; The CBI had appealed in the Supreme Court against the verdict where it will come up for hearing at the end of this month.

GUHA Niyogi may be a forgotten face but in trade union circles he is still a phenomenon. Imprisoned during the emergency, he formed the Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh in 1977. By then he had been dismissed by his employers, the Bhilai Steel Plant.

In June that year when the police came to arrest Guha Niyogi who was leading a strike, workers resisted. The police opened fire and eleven workers were killed at Dalli-Rajahara mines. He was at the helm of many such strikes in the region.

But he was more than just a labour union leader. He furthered social causes such as health care, anti-gambling and prohibition. His popularity grew and soon he formed the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha CMM8212;an umbrella organisation of unions and leaders.

In 1990 Guha Niyogi started a campaign demanding regularisation of contract workers employed in large and medium industrial units in Bhilai. Industrialists, especially Simplex Engineering and Foundry Works, owned by Mool Chand Shah8212;one of the two industrialists convicted by the trial court, the Bhilai Engineering Corporation owned by B R Jain of the hawala scandal case and the Kedia and BK industrial groups, were worst hit by the agitation.

The campaign was in its first few months when Guha Niyogi started receiving threats. Simplex industries, whose owners were known to be close to the BJP, was accused of organising attacks on protesting CMM activists such as Umashankar Rai and Bharat Bhushan Pande. Terror and tension ruled Bhilai. Nearly 5,000 workers, mostly belonging to the CMM, were fired by their employers.

It was in this volatile environment in April 1991 that Guha Niyogi received an anonymous letter warning him of a plot being hatched allegedly by the Simplex industries to get him killed. His diary, later accepted as part of evidence by the trial court, contained names of the industrialists from whom he feared an attack.

On September 11, 1991, an anxious Guha Niyogi went to Delhi to submit a memorandum signed by 50,000 workers to the President, seeking his intervention to ensure safety of workers in Bhilai. On September 27 he was killed.

Says Rajendera Sayal, his close associate and a key witness in the trial: 8216;8216;The motive behind Niyogi8217;s murder was not merely to kill a powerful labour leader but to crush the movement itself.8217;8217;

But the labour movement in Bhilai has survived Niyogi8217;s death and is even flourishing in the now new state of Chhattisgarh.

The Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha runs eleven schools for children of mine and industrial workers at Bhilai and Durg and has opened a 300-bed hospital at Dalli-Rajahara. And Guha Niyogi lives on in an annual award for journalism instituted by the Mukti Morcha in his memory.