Farmers Movement Archive

Noida: Man walks up to farmers at border, calls them terrorists

NOIDA: A 28-year-old construction materials dealer who was in the Chilla area on Friday morning to pay a traffic fine created a flutter by walking up to the farmer agitation site and shouting at the gathering. Farmers alleged he called them “terrorists” while questioning their protest against the Centre’s new farming laws. The man, who police said is based in Greater Noida, was taken into police custody soon after when he got into a scuffle with the protesters. He was taken to Sector 20 police station, where he remained detained at the time of filing the report on Friday evening. Farmers at Chilla – where the protest began on December 1 – said they had never seen him before. They also claimed he was accompanied by one or two others. “He was here for the first time along with one or two more persons, who possibly managed to flee,” said Yogesh Pratap Singh, state president of Bharatiya Kisan Union-Bhanu, one of the outfits leading the protests here. “He was asking protesters what was wrong with the farm laws. We feel he is one of the agents who have been deployed among farmers, trying to destablilise and break our protest,” he added. During his tirade, the intruder also allegedly told the farmers minimum support price (MSP) would remain intact and they had no reason to protest. One of the protesters, Praveen Sharma, told TOI the farmers were speaking to news reporters when he walked up and started shouting at them. “He was trying to induce violence. Before the media, he called us terrorists. Are we terrorists? We are sharing our pain here,” he said. Amarpal, another protester, added, “We told him if we had no problems, why would we be sitting here? We asked him if he was a farmer and told him to show us proof that he was. He did not show us any identity card.” As tension rose, and some farmers pushed him away, police intervened. He was taken away in a van. Farmers said he wasn’t the first – a few had this week popped up at the protest site and got into arguments with them. Farmer outfits had earlier this week criticised attempts by those in the government to defame their protests through references like ‘terrorists’ and ‘Khalistanis’. “In the morning, a woman had come to the protest site. She started arguing with farmers over the laws but when we asked her her name, she left the spot,” Amarpal said. “What can we say? Such elements have been caught at the Singhu and Ghazipur borders too. They are being planted by the BJP government to destabilise and demean our protests,” the BKU-Bhanu’s Singh. Asked about the intruder and the Chilla incident, BJP’s Noida unit head Manoj Gupta said, “Farmers are our brothers and we respect our farmers. He (the intruder) is not our worker.” Police said the Beta I resident was active on social media. On a social media account, he claims to have graduated from a well-known management and engineering college in Greater Noida. ACP Vimal Kumar said he had come to the Sector 14A office of the DCP, which also houses the traffic police office, to pay a challan and went to the protest site. While being taken away in the police van, he told reporters when he was right, there shouldn’t be a problem. “I am saying when the farmer has been given all kinds of liberty, what was the problem? I came here to ask them what problem they had,” he said. Watch Noida: Man walks up to protesting farmers, calls them terrorists

The Times of India

2020-12-19

Noida