New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh police and administration have engaged in a “witch-hunt” and “repression” of workers and activists involved in the recent Noida workers’ protest and were also complicit in the Noida violence, said activists, lawyers and journalists during a press conference held today (April 19) at the Press Club of India.The narrative being pushed forward by the state police and mainstream media was “false” and was vilifying activists and the workers instead of truly investigating the matter, the activists and others said at the press conference.Social activist Sreeja said that in response to the workers’ movement that arose in Noida, which was for seeking an increase in minimum wages, double payment for overtime, dignity at their workplaces and other just and valid demands, the Uttar Pradesh police had picked up four activists (including three women) on April 11.Sreeja said the police picked them up from the Botanical Garden Metro Station at around 6:55 pm without any justification, and that they were forcibly taken into a police vehicle.The activists also said that the Noida police and administration had refused to even disclose whether these activists were in custody, and had not divulged their whereabouts.On April 12, when other activists and lawyers reached the Surajpur Court, hoping to find some information about the four activists, the Noida police “kidnapped” these activists and lawyers as well. They were “manhandled, abused and threatened by the police, before being released late at night due to massive pressure from workers, advocates, human rights groups and pro-worker intellectuals”, the activists’ said in a statement.The Siasat daily had reported on April 13 that Uttar Pradesh Police, on April 11, took eight labour activists belonging to the Mazdoor Bigul organisation, including three women, into custody. Civil society groups had said that the detention was illegal and noted that while four individuals have been released, the other four were in jail for a 15-day period as per a court order.The Uttar Pradesh police also spearheaded a “smear campaign” against these activists. The police was “vilifying a just movement of workers who were protesting for their basic right of dignified wages and better working conditions”, the activists said at the press conference.Social activist Priyamvada said that the Uttar Pradesh Police and “Godi Media” had spread propaganda that the workers’ protests were part of a “conspiracy” and even managed to conjure up some “Pakistan connections” and “naxal connections” to the workers protests, portraying the arrested labour activists as “masterminds of the conspiracy”.According to a report by the Times of India, the police have claimed that they had received “technical data” from social media platform X on Thursday that showed that the handles of two activists, Aditya Anand and Rupesh, were being continuously operated from Pakistan.“The narrative that Uttar Pradesh police and the mainstream media are spreading, that Aditya and Rupesh are the masterminds who instigated violence by creating WhatsApp groups, is baseless,” Priyamvada said.Also read: Workers’ Protest Are a Symptom, Not the DiseaseShe said that they have proof that the WhatsApp group in which Aditya Anand and Rupesh were admins had no messages from Rupesh at all. Aditya’s video appeals were posted frequently on the group, in which he was continuously saying that the protest must be conducted peacefully and not fall prey to any attempt by the administration to invoke violence. Priyamvada added:“There is also video evidence of him [Aditya Anand] conducting a pledge with the protesting workers on April 11 itself, urging them that the strike must be held in a peaceful manner, with an appeal to the police to support the workers.”Advocate Colin Gonsalves noted that students and activists are increasingly facing repression and wrongful incarceration for raising their voice for justice, and that the state was “cooking up” conspiracies to hide its own crimes against its citizens.“Today the state is violating all rules and due process of law to hide its own failures, its inability to provide a living wage to the workers of this country,” Gonsalves said, the statement said. However, these “tactics” cannot stop the justice-loving people of this country from speaking up, he said, adding that the silence that the state is trying to impose will be met with more and more people speaking up.At the press conference, Supreme Court advocate Kawalpreet Kaur said that it has now become almost a predictable pattern that as soon as a mass movement emerges, a narrative of a “conspiracy” and “mastermind” is floated.Flames billow as a police bike is set ablaze during a factory worker protest in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Monday, April 13, 2026. Photo: PTI.“The workers and the toiling masses of the country have learnt to see through these cheap tricks of the police and the Godi [pliant] Media,” Kaur said, adding, “If workers were made to work in desperate and precarious conditions, and paid only Rs 11,000 while their salary slips show an amount of Rs 18,000, if they are not paid the legal right of double overtime, if they are continuously mistreated at their workplace, then protesting against these exploitative and oppressive conditions is a basic constitutional right of the workers and no sane person can term them as ‘anti-national’ or call the movement a ‘conspiracy’.”Media houses such as NDTV – which was taken over by the Adani Group in 2022 – have labelled Aditya Anand the “mastermind” behind the Noida workers protest, and claimed that he was arrested from Tiruchirappalli Railway Station in Tamil Nadu on April 19. Another media house, India Today, claimed that the police said that three “organised groups” were behind Noida worker unrest, and that a left-wing outfit member had been arrested.Advocate Kabir pointed out at the press conference that the police has also arrested many people who were not even in the protests – journalists, public intellectuals and authors have been arrested from places like Delhi and Lucknow without any rhyme or reason, simply because they spoke in favour of the workers. What is more, he said, even lawyers are unable to enter the court premises, and are in fact, being bullied by the police for simply doing their work.No due procedures are being followed, and are in fact being openly flouted, no arrest memos are being made and even relatives are not being informed.Human rights activist Himanshu Kumar spoke of the increasing attacks on workers’ rights and their worsening condition, saying that the workers are being squeezed to their very bones and 13-hour workdays have been made the norm.Saroj Giri, associate professor at the University of Delhi, pointed out that the real ‘conspiracy’ is by the government – to invisiblise workers from every worker movement and “cleverly hide” the role of the big capitalists by issuing statements about taking action against the [labour] contractors who allowed them to be exploited.