Tension grips Sholtu camp as woman cop ‘commits suicide’

Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 29

A woman constable of the 5th IRB Battalion hailing from Jwalamukhi in Kangra and deployed at Kinnaur district following the ongoing strike of workers of Jay Pee Company allegedly committed suicide at the Satluj Bhavan of Jay Pee in Sholtu near Tapri.

She was found hanging from the ceiling fan of a room at a place, where workers of Karcham-Wangtoo and Baspa II power projects in Kinnaur are on strike for over a month. A three-line suicide note recovered from near her body stated that she wished to die and that nobody was responsible for her death. A post-mortem was also conducted and further investigations were on.

Tension prevails at the site after a couple of incidents, following which District Collector, Kinnaur, Naresh Lath said he would take up the issue with workers’ union tomorrow and try to resolve the dispute.

The High Court had fixed March 31 as the date of hearing in the petition filed by the Union accusing the JP company of violating labour laws in the projects. The alleged suicide incident has further vitiated the atmosphere as all 200 policemen on duty are camping at the accommodation of the company, workers said. Other employees, including teachers of the company-run school at Sholtu, too are panic stricken.

On the other hand, Rikhi Sharma, AGM JP group in Himachal, said the company still asked workers to join work as they had already agreed to give them Rs1,500 hike, which includes allowances and other benefits, a claim that workers’ union termed as false saying that that they had sought a wage hike of Rs1,400 plus other allowances, adding that the charter of demands referred to the labour court was incomplete. Workers said the government had not shown enough political will to resolve the dispute and was siding with the company, as the site had been turned into a police garrison to crush the genuine demands of workers, forcing them to live in sub-zero temperatures.

The government should not make it an ego issue simply because the workers’ union was formed by INTUC, and now CITU too was supporting their demand, local residents said, expressing sympathy with the workers, who have been uprooted from Tapri after DC Kinnaur imposed Section 144 and deployed about 200 policemen at the sites since March 18.

JP company top managers Sunil Jain and Praveen Thakur landed at Sholtu in a chopper yesterday.

The suicide incident followed after the CITU vice-president Rakesh Singha charged that there was a bid to attack him by a speeding vehicle of the JP company at Bithal yesterday. But the company instead levelled counter charge that CITU workers thrashed the convoy of the company managers. Lath said they would review the whole situation tomorrow and would take up the matter with the workers’ union as the company too has sent some hint to settle the dispute.