Hardwar, Jan. 11: For eight months, 115 sacked workers of Swami Ramdev’s Divya Yog Trust have been taking turns going on hunger strike in the nagarpalika office premises.

Now they are threatening to let crabs, turtles, wild animals’ testicles and more out of the bag if they are not reinstated with respect and the controversial pharmacy brought under the Factories Act.

“Too many things happening inside the Divya Yog pharmacy have still not been revealed. (We have to be reinstated), nahin to aur pole kholenge. Abhi tak to kuch bhi nahin janta ko aur sarkar ko Divya pharmacy ke bare mein maalum hai,” a striking worker said.

The workers are, surprisingly, less furious with Ramdev and more cut up with officials actually running the show, especially pharmacy secretary Acharya Balkrishan Shastri.

“The swami has never entered the pharmacy. He probably does not know what has been going on inside. We, however, hold him responsible because it is due to his work that the pharmacy is making huge profits. He, too, has been calling us goondas,” another worker Chandra Pal Bishnoi alleged.

Bishnoi claimed he and his colleagues were not making a noise just to attract attention or gain publicity. The pharmacy they used to work for is in the middle of a storm since CPM leader Brinda Karat alleged last week that human and animal parts were being used in its drugs.

“First, the trust exploited us by denying our rights. Then they kicked women workers for revealing bones were being mixed in some medicines and refused to honour the May tripartite agreement to solve the labour problem. A consignment of crabs and turtles was confiscated by police,” he alleged.

The workers are demanding that a CBI probe be held into the goings-on at the pharmacy. No government official, including district magistrate R.K. Sudhanshu, has visited them since they went on strike although he did write to the government on the matter.

“The government is silent on the action that should be taken into the affairs of the pharmacy. We can do nothing without orders from the top in this particular case,” an officer said.

Bishnoi said the whole issue would not have snowballed had the pharmacy honoured its part of the bargain. “Had the agreement with us been honoured in May, it would have been smooth sailing. Nobody would have called the Baba a black sheep and there would have been no bones controversy.”

Another sacked employee Promilla Verma, squatting on the nagarpalika premises and discussing with women colleagues how the workers’ union should proceed, said she had begun to get nightmares about the work she had done.

“It sends shivers down my spine when I think that what I had been turning to paste were human bones. I wake up with nightmares.

“My relatives tell me my harrowing dreams are caused by the souls whose bones I had crushed inside the pharmacy for months without knowing what I was doing,” she said.

Pharmacy officials vehemently denied human bones were used in their medicines. As for the man at the centre of the feud with the workers ? the yog trust’s human resource department head Lalit Mohan ? he dismissed whole thing as a “conspiracy”.

“It is a conspiracy to defame our guru who is teaching the world their illnesses can be cured through yoga and ayurvedic medicines that do not cost much,” Mohan claimed.

“All of them (workers) were only volunteers who needed a job. That they received some emoluments was due to swamiji who cared for their well being. They have insulted the trust swamiji had on them.”

The swami’s brother, Rambharat, purportedly the “receiver” of bones from people coming to the pharmacy, claimed the allegations were “a direct attack against Indian civilisation”.

“If bones were indeed being mixed with other ingredients to make ayurvedic medicines, we would have needed truckloads of them every day and not small packets carried by individuals. The workers are simple people and they have been lured to make statements against the pharmacy and Swami Ramdev. We have nothing to hide,” he said.

The sacked workers had a lot to say about the amount of money the trust was making. They claimed the Rs 3 lakh figure the trust was portraying as the value of its sales last year was just a drop in the ocean.

“The pharmacy has been selling medicines worth lakhs daily. They have even been buying rejected medicines from other pharmacies, pasting Divya Yog’s labels and sending them back into the markets,” accused Snehlata, another sacked worker.

“We don’t even remember everything that was happening in the pharmacy. There was this lady from Ludhiana who used to come every week to buy sex prowess medicines worth lakhs.

“She was one of many customers who bought medicines worth lakhs regularly. The medicines were being bought by over 2,000 persons daily and each would take back medicines worth at least Rs 1,500,” she claimed.

The workers are peeved that Uttaranchal politicians have been rallying behind Ramdev. “In May, the government was intimated that human bones and skulls were being mixed in medicines. Then why did chief minister N.D. Tiwari open the pharmacy’s second unit in December second week?” asked Manju.

Another worker said alternative jobs had been hard to come by. “I have not been able to buy rice or wheat for months now. I am living on alms like the others. I hope I get back to working as early as possible, otherwise my children will die.”