Farmers Movement Archive

Farmers raise pitch, protest with bodies

A day after four farmers were mowed to death in a violent incident involving vehicles in the convoy of a Union Minister, hundreds of farmers predominantly from the Sikh community gathered at the site of the incident in Tikonia. For several hours, the farmers parked a tractor next to the ground where the incident took place, and kept the bodies of the four farmers on display in freezer caskets. Farmers said they would not move from the site and would not carry out the last rites till their demands of action against Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Kumar Mishra and his son Ashish were met. Religious slogans and chants resonated at the site. However, around 1 p.m., the tension was defused after Bharatiya Kisan Union spokesperson Rakesh Tikait emerged after a meeting with top Uttar Pradesh Government officials, and from a makeshift platform, requested the protesters and the families of the victims to return home. Mr. Tikait, who started his speech with the slogan, “ Veer shahidon ka balidan, yaad karega Hindustan (the country will remember the sacrifice of the brave martyrs),” told the crowd that the Kisan Sanghathan had won a “big victory” as the Union Minister’s son had been booked for murder and Rs. 45 lakh compensation promised for each family, along with a Government job, and that a judicial investigation would be conducted. “The Minister and his son will not be spared... He will lose his ministerial post,” Mr. Tikait assured the protesters. The BKU leader also said that an ultimatum had been issued to the government that if it did not take satisfactory action till the funeral rituals of the dead were completed in 10 to 12 days, a mahapanchayat would be called. Following his assurances, officials of the district administration arrived at the site and moved the bodies into ambulances to take them to the district hospital for autopsy and the farmers and their leaders dispersed. An FIR under Sections 302 and 304-A of the Indian Penal Code has been lodged against the Minister’s son, who the farmers alleged was in one of the vehicles that ploughed into the waiting farmers, and 10 to 15 unknown persons. Distraught kin Among the dead, wrapped in a BKU flag, was the body of Lovepreet Singh, 20, a resident of Chauktha Farm in Lakhimpur Kheri. His mother, Sukhvinder Kaur, was inconsolable, weeping and kissing the glass casket inside which the body lay. Lovepreet, a farmer like most other Sikhs in the fertile Terai belt of U.P., was the only son of his parents. His brother-in-law Makkan Singh questioned the narrative of Union Minister Mishra that the vehicle involved in the incident was en route to receive Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya at the helipad of the Maharaja Agrasen ground. Makkan Singh said the administration had informed the protesters that the Deputy Chief Minister’s route had been changed but even then three cars belonging to Mr. Mishra’s convoy drove towards the farmers lined up on either side of the road at full speed. “It was a planned murder,” Mr. Singh said. Next to Lovepreet’s body lay that of Nachattar Singh, 60. Hearing the news of Nachattar’s death, his younger son, Mandeep, 25, an SSB jawan, left his post in Almora for Tikonia. The family is from Dhauraha in Kheri.

The Hindu

2021-10-05

LAKHIMPUR KHERI