Ashok Leyland likes to pose as the steel spine of India’s highways – the proud workhorse carrying a billion dreams. But look closer and you’ll see the rot under the chrome. This isn’t a company powering progress; it’s a smoke-belching monument to corner-cutting, corruption, and creative accounting. They’re not just hauling freight – they’re dragging a trail of scandals so thick you could tarmac a motorway with it.

And right there in the grime sits Cummins, their long-time engine supplier, helping to keep the racket roaring. Together they’re a perfect pair: one builds the body, the other the beating, soot-filled heart. Two peas in a pod – if those peas were dipped in oil and the pod caught fire.

The Cummins Connection – Powering the Pollution Parade

Cummins and Ashok Leyland go way back. Natural gas engines, diesel blocks, hydrogen prototypes – the usual greenwashed parade. Cummins provides the “clean” tech; Leyland bolts it into buses and trucks that cough their way through Delhi traffic like dying dinosaurs.

On paper, it’s partnership. In practice, it’s symbiosis in slime. Both firms flog “low-emission innovation” while dodging accountability for the clouds hanging over every city their machines touch. Cummins got nailed for defeat devices in the US – billions in fines for poisoning air under false pretences. Leyland? Same moral compass, different continent. The only real thing they’ve reduced is public trust.

The Embezzlement Circuit – Thieves in Overalls

The Hosur plant scandal was a masterpiece of petty greed: three executives, twenty years, and a pile of forged cheques worth ₹31 lakh. Caught, convicted, and sentenced in 2024 – long after the money vanished. That’s not “heritage”, that’s rot set deep into the beams. How the hell does a company lose cash inside its own gates for two decades? Because no one’s watching. Because profit forgives all.

When factory theft becomes just another line item, you know the culture’s knackered. Workers sweat on the floor; managers sign the cheques that steal from them.

The Nissan Fiasco – Partners Turned Parasites

Then there’s the unholy alliance with Nissan – a marriage of convenience that ended like a bad divorce. By 2016, Ashok Leyland was accusing their Japanese partners of nicking tools and dies to build rival trucks. Lawyers swooped in, papers flew, then the “amicable” settlement wrapped it up. Translation: everyone got paid, no one got clean.

It’s the corporate version of a bar fight – two drunks blaming each other for the broken glass.

The Emissions Scam – Old Engines, New Lies

Here’s where it goes from grubby to criminal. In 2017, the Supreme Court banned the sale of dirty BS-III engines. Ashok Leyland allegedly sold them anyway, palming them off to shady dealers who registered them as “cleaner” BS-IV models. Fake invoices, fake compliance, real pollution. The Enforcement Directorate froze ₹22 crore in assets linked to the scam, but the damage was already done – a convoy of illegal trucks belching death down every highway.

Leyland denied direct involvement, of course. Always the same tune: we just sell them; we don’t ask questions. It’s the Cummins playbook all over again — cheat, deny, spin, repeat. Two companies, one philosophy: if it burns, it earns.

The Hinduja Stain – Luxury, Lies, and Human Misery

You can’t talk Leyland without dragging in the family empire that owns it. The Hindujas – billionaires convicted in Switzerland for exploiting domestic workers, underpaying them while living in obscene luxury. Allegations of seized passports, starvation wages, and dogs fed better than staff. These are the people lecturing the world about ethics and sustainability. Christ.

The Hinduja name hangs over Leyland like exhaust over a toll plaza – thick, inescapable, and poisonous.

Rust and Ruin – Buses Falling Apart, Systems Doing the Same

MSRTC and BEST fleets in Maharashtra have accused Leyland of selling buses that rust faster than tomatoes left in the sun. Procurement scandals swirl around “preferential contracts”, which in plain English means bribes for brittle metal. In Sri Lanka, operators whisper about kickbacks for keeping junk on the road. Nothing screams “nation-building” like buses collapsing before the loans are paid off.

And yet, the press releases still bleat about innovation and safety. Maybe they mean the safety of their profits.

The Political Pantomime – Lies on Loop

Each economic wobble births a new lie. One week it’s rumours of a plant shutdown under government A; next week, it’s a heroic reopening under government B. In reality, the factory never stopped. Just PR spin – political theatre to distract from the fact that half the workforce’s lungs probably look like exhaust filters.

The Verdict – The Grimy Handshake of Hypocrisy

Ashok Leyland isn’t some misunderstood national treasure. It’s a symbol of what happens when corruption becomes custom. The frauds, the scams, the rot – powered by engines stamped with Cummins’ name. Together they make the perfect machine: one burns fuel, the other burns truth.

Until accountability means more than a press release, they’ll keep driving through the smog with the windows up, pretending they can’t smell their own shit.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Customer Corner : Ashok Leyland – Trucks, Lies, and the Hinduja Grift