Farmers Movement Archive

Farmer unions deny Red Fort conspiracy

Bathinda: Farmer unions have rejected the conspiracy angle put in the Delhi Police detailed charge sheet about the January 26 violence and claimed they never wanted to go to the Red Fort but the cops had blocked all other routes. The farmers said the allegation that they wanted to occupy the Red Fort was “motivated by the central government’s agenda of defaming the farmers”. In the 3,224-page charge sheet filed in the Tis Hazari court on May 17, Delhi Police stated that the violence was pre-mediated and the farmers wanted to make the monument another protest site. The charge sheet names 16 people, including Deep Sidhu.Farm unionist Darshan Pal said: "The farmers never had the ill intention of playing with national pride or causing any damage to the national monuments. The farmers were on the prescribed route but the police put barricades to divert them to the outer ring road and towards the Red Fort." BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) president Joginder Singh Ugrahan said: "Delhi police gave the protesters safe passage to the Red Fort to be able to defame the agitation, and now they float a theory that we wanted to occupy the monument." The farmer unionists also denied that the surge in tractor sales between November 2020 and January this year had anything to do with their agitation. They said it was linked to subsidising of the super-seeder machines for managing the crop residue. They said the tractor sales had increased in the other months as well and "no one buys a costly tractor to smash it through police barricades". A farmer unionist said: "Punjab farmers are not that rich. They take loan for these machines.”

The Times of India

2021-05-28

Delhi