On 15 December 2021, 256 workers at Foxconn's Sriperumbudur factory developed Acute Diarrhoeal Disease due to food poisoning, after eating food at the company provided hostel. As a result of which 159 workers were hospitalised.[145] The workers were provided no information about this, due to which a rumour started spreading among the workers through Whatsapp that two workers had died.[146] By 17 December there were sit-in protests in worker dormitories, by 10 pm of the same day, thousands of women workers of the factory staged protests on the Chennai-Bengaluru national highway,[147] this was met by police detainment of 67 women protestors and arrest of one journalist, with many of them being released a day later.[148] Following the protests the factory was shut down for a week, with the state government and district administration investigating the worker conditions. On 22 December the Food safety department sealed the kitchen of the dormitory[149] finding rats and poor drainage.