In March 2006, Tamil Nadu government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Foxconn India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision, with investment worth Rs 485 crores and creating jobs for10,000 people. It is a Special Economic Zone unit, with its main factory located inside Nokia Telecom SEZ in Sriperumbadur, Kancheepuram District. Another factory is located at Sunguvarchattiram near Sriperumbudur, which is where this incident occurred. Foxconn India mainly assembles mobile parts (metal and plastic covers, display boards) for Finnish mobile giant Nokia. Previously, it also used to assemble complete mobile sets for Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

FoxConn Electronics caught global attention due to a spate of workers suicides in its factory located inside Shenzhen SEZ in China since January 2010. Sixteen workers had committed suicide till June 2010 in the Shenzhen plant by jumping from the factory roof owing to difficult work conditions and poor wages. As a company which supplies globally renowned brands like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel and Sony, the company's massive labour rights violations at its iPod assembling unit in Shenzhen has attracted global attention. A recent article in the British newspaper Mail on Sunday states that these violations include - below-legal minimum wages (with workers reportedly earning $50 a month); 15 hour routine work shifts ; poor and unsafe working conditions; inadequate dormitories etc.

On 23rd-24th July 2010, after experiencing ‘mysterious poisonous gas leak’ in the assembling unit of Foxconn India Private Limited, over 200 workers fell unconscious with some vomiting blood and complained of giddiness, breathlessness, coughing, pain in the chest.

Download and read the report of the Independent Fact Finding Team