Scores of people were injured Monday after riot police beat hundreds of workers at a Japanese automobile factory in the Indian capital, television reports said. National networks showed live the beating of cowering workers outside their factory by swarms of riot policemen in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, where scores of multinational companies have set up manufacturing bases.
Television reporters at the cordoned-off site said Gurgaon hospitals were packed with bleeding workers from the Indian subsidiary of Japanese car-maker Honda.
The incident reportedly erupted after workers in a show of solidarity with some 30 sacked colleagues violated a police restriction on processions and tried to block a highway and then attacked a small police contingent.
An assault on a senior officer prompted the police to call in reinforcements, leading to the beating of hundreds of people, many of them workers of Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India Ltd, the reports said.
Minutes later battalions of riot policemen carrying automatic weapons and wooden staves corralled the mob in a public park and beat them, footage broadcast on television networks Aaj Tak, Star News and NDTV showed.
Bleeding workers were shown being dragged by their feet and policemen kicked and punched men lying inert on the pavement.
Half a dozen privately-run television stations said an estimated 700 workers were injured, some seriously, but it was not possible to get any immediate independent confirmation of the numbers involved.
The chief minister of Haryana state, which includes Gurgaon, Bhupender Singh Hooda promised an investigation into the police action. "I have ordered an independent enquiry as no one has the right to take the law in their hands," a visibly-troubled Hooda told television networks.
"I have seen the (TV) footages and there has been violence, open violence. My government's policy is to look after the welfare of the workers but at the same time we also have to maintain law and order," the chief minister said.
Senior Marxist leader Gurudas Dasgupta, who was also manhandled at the site, accused police of using excessive force.
"What happened was brutal action, naked violation of human rights which left a very large number of people seriously injured and hundreds more arrested," said Dasgupta.