Police to act against companies after employees in Baddi industrial belt caught sneaking into work

Ambika Sharma
Tribune News Service
Solan, April 18

Company managements will be held responsible for employees sneaking into workplaces in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh(BBN) industrial belt, police said.

Employees, including security guards, were increasingly using trucks and escape routes along porous borders to come into work in defiance of curfew orders that were in place, police said.

Neeraj Akhori, a deputy warehouse manager of Aristo Pharma and another warehouse official, Ashwani Kumar, hid inside a truck and sneaked past checkpoints on April 16, police said.

A truck driver picked up Akhori, a resident of Pinjore, at an interstate barricade near Baddi and dropped him off near the pharmaceutical company. Ashwani, who lives in Bilaspur, is believed to have sneaked past the barrier and walked to the company.

“With increasing number of such cases coming to fore in this belt, which borders the containment zones of Pinjore and Punjab, company managements would be held responsible for such acts, apart from cases being registered against individual employees,” Baddi Superintendent of Police Rohit Malpani said.

Police detained 13 people---including six security guards---trying to sneak into the industrial belt at Bagguwala along Haryana border during a surprise raid on Sunday morning. Police said they used the escape routes regularly to sneak into the companies.

In another instance, factory owner of Auraya Healthcare, Jharmajri, has been booked after a truck carrying goods from Mumbai came to the unit on Saturday. Security guards stationed at the unit gate told police that the truck was allowed in on owner’s orders.

Three employees of yet another pharmaceutical company, Scot Edil Advance Research Laboratory in Barotiwala, were booked for sneaking into Baddi on Saturday. All three took a lift from Pinjore till Shahpur and then walked to their unit.

The officer said security agencies have also been told to keep their staff in check, and warned that their licences would be cancelled.

All of those people caught sneaking in have been sent to quarantine centres.