Tikamgarh: Going beyond routine administrative disdain while quelling a fierce protest by agitating farmers in Tikamgarh district, police allegedly locked up farmers, retreating after the protest, stripped them and beat them up on Tuesday evening.
Anger swept the social media as soon as the pictures of roughed up farmers went viral on Wednesday.
Thousands of farmers had staged a protest while demanding drought-hit status as part of Youth Congress campaign Khet Bachao-Kisan Bachao at Tikamgarh on Tuesday. As YC state head Kunal Chaudhary ushered the farmers towards Collectorate, the police tried stopping them with barricades.
“We reached collectorate and wanted to hand over a memorandum to collector who asked us to send in three people inside his room to hand over the memorandum,” Chaudhary told News18. After Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh had returned to Bhopal, Chaudhary and farmers sat on dharna insisting collector to come out and accept memorandum, the police according to YC state head, started unprovoked lathicharge, lobbed tear gas shells at demonstrators indiscriminately and used water cannons against them.
After the agitation was over, the farmers started to retreat to their respective locations. A group aboard a tractor trolley was allegedly intercepted by police from Dehat thana. “The farmers were kept in lock up, stripped and beaten up mercilessly,” Chaudhary alleged.
The YC state head went on to claim that it seemed that administration wished to repeat Mandsaur like incident at Tikamgarh. In June this year, five farmers had died in police shootout at Mandsaur during a protest.
LoO Ajay Singh later in a statement flaying the incident alleged that state government did not like the fact that farmers were taking to streets for their justified rights.
Addl Superintendent of Police, Rakesh Khakh who was present during the agitation, could not be reached for comments despite several attempts.
Shivkumar Sharma Kakkaji, the farmers’ union leader claimed that maybe it was Dewas, Mandsaur, Ratlam or anywhere else, the MP government was coming down heavily on farmers’ agitations. The farmers going back home were detained and beaten up in Tikamgarh in order to terrorise them.
“They wish to torment farmers so much so that they can’t raise their heads against the government,” Sharma who led the farmers’ agitation in June this year, claimed.
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