Wednesday’s act of rioting and arson by plant workers at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant in Haryana is all set to dent the carmaker’s sales, production and revenues.

Not only has a manager been killed, about 100 officials have been injured as workers attacked the plant with iron rods, wooden sticks and burned down parts of the plant.

Workers attacked the plant after a disciplinary incident with a single employee.

Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant may now remain closed for at least 15-20 days and according to a company official, the delay is both because of the extensive damage to property and unavailability of workers, apart from the fact that the senior management “is against going there”.

“It will be suicide to start early and there is no urgency as officials are scared to go back there. There is no clarity on when the plant will start,” reports said citing the official.

A decision on when to re-start the plant is likely to be taken after Maruti’s Managing Director, Shinzo Nakanishi, comes back from a visit to Suzuki Motor headquarters in Hamamatsu, Japan, after July 25.

Meanwhile, Maruti is expected to lose at least 1,900 units of production a day of popular models such as the Swift and Dzire, apart from the SX4 and A-Star.

Although production of the top-selling Swift will be increased at Gurgaon to compensate for the loss in output at Manesar, the challenge is that the welded bodies of both the Swift and Dzire are only made at the closed Manesar facility.

On Friday, the company also cleared the existing inventory at its Manesar plant yard. This is expected to feed the dealer supply for about two days.

The violence comes just nine months after the end of strikes at the facility that cost more than $500 mn in lost production,