Money, ID, only link to family: Noida Police hold on to phones despite workers being released

Most of the nearly 1,100 workers detained by Uttar Pradesh police under Section 170 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita – a provision meant for preventive detention, not punishment – have been released. But when this article was written, more than 15 days after they were released, the workers’ phones or personal belongings had not yet been returned.

They had been detained after a series of protests led by contract workers across industrial units in Noida over the course of six days from April 9. The workers were drawing attention to their low wages, worsening working conditions and lack of statutory protections. Adding to their problems has been the rise in the price of cooking gas since the start of the war on Iran.

Rather than being addressed as labour disputes, these assertions of basic rights were met with a police crackdown, converting an industrial relations issue into a question of public order.

Not returning the phones of the workers after they were released from detention is a continuation of punishment after the detention has ended.

A phone, for most working-class Indians, is their only interface with their financial lives and identity proof: UPI, mobile banking, the digital wallet hold whatever little they may have saved while their...

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