‘Crushed from behind’: Video fuels UP tension
Three farmers were cremated on Tuesday but the family of a fourth demanded a second post-mortem examination, reopening an issue that appeared to have been settled on Monday with the government promising ₹45 lakh compensation and a judicial enquiry into the killings.
A 29-second video showing a vehicle plough through protesters from behind ratcheted up tensions in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri on Tuesday, with farm groups and Opposition leaders blaming junior home minister Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’ and his son Ashish Mishra for the violence that killed eight people in the district two days ago.
Three farmers were cremated on Tuesday but the family of a fourth demanded a second post-mortem examination, reopening an issue that appeared to have been settled on Monday with the government promising ₹45 lakh compensation and a judicial enquiry into the killings.
“An agreement in Lakhimpur Kheri is not the end of the movement. The government has to dismiss the minister, arrest his son and fulfil its promises timely,” said farm leader Rakesh Tikait, who led the negotiations with the administration on Monday. Internet services were restored in the area on Tuesday evening.
Farm groups say the car, a Mahindra Thar owned by Mishra, knocked down protesters in Tikunia hamlet on Sunday afternoon and sparked the violence but the minister and his son denied the charge, and blamed the cultivators of killing three people, including two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers and a driver. A local journalist was also killed.
“It all happened in front of me…my father was knocked down by the vehicle from behind. I tried to hold him but couldn’t do anything,” said 14-year-old Rajdeep Singh, whose father Daljeet, 35, was cremated on Tuesday. All four farmers killed were Sikhs and residents of the state’s Terai belt.
The source and the veracity of the video need to be ascertained but they are in sync with the version of the protesting farmers. The identity of the individuals in the vehicles is unclear.
While the minister’s version of the incident is that the vehicles came under attack and lost control, nothing of that sort can be seen in the video. The lead vehicle appears to deliberately run over the farmers — and from behind. To be sure, the video is only 29 seconds long and is only a blurry video shot at the time of the incident.
The exact spot in the video appears to be of Tikunia road leading towards Lakhimpur and around 100 meters away from the playground where the farmers were staging the protest on the day of the incident. If authentic, the video is likely to inflame sentiments against Ajay Mishra and his son Ashish.
Hardeep Singh, 38, a farmer from Tikunia who was at the spot at the time of the incident and who has seen this video said, “The video confirms what we have been saying all along. And we say that Ashish Mishra was present in one of the vehicles and is responsible for the killing of the innocent farmers”.
Police said it will probe the videos. “All the videos and photographs of the Lakhimpur Kheri incident that have surfaced and surfacing will be authenticated and included in the investigation,” said Prashant Kumar, additional director general (ADG), law and order.
Post-mortem reports of the farmers killed showed that there were no bullet injuries on any of the bodies, and that all four died due to shock, excessive bleeding and haemorrhage , said SN Sabat, officiating additional director general of police (Lucknow Zone).HT has not seen a copy of the post-mortem reports.
The findings, experts say, are consistent with deaths arising from injuries, such as those caused in an automobile accident, although it isn’t known whether the reports themselves point to the farmers being run over by a vehicle, as indicated in the unauthenticated video that has emerged.
Ashish Mishra and 20 others were booked by the police for murder and criminal conspiracy on Monday. The complainant, a local farmer, alleged in the first information report (FIR) that Ashish Mishra was in the car that mowed down protesters, and that he fired shots at the farmers, killing one.
“The cars were at high speed, lost control and overturned… Ashish Mishra escaped into the sugarcane fields while firing shots,” read the FIR, accessed by HT. The document also mentioned three cars and the make and registration numbers of two of them.
Ashish Mishra, however, said farmers pelted stones at the convoy, which made the driver lose control; farmers then set fire to two cars, pulled out two BJP workers and the driver and lynched them.
“How can the allegations be proven when we were not at the spot?” Ajay Mishra asked reporters.
The minister, and some of his colleagues in the BJP, speculated about the presence of external “anti-national elements” among the protesting farmers in interviews and comments. “From Indira Gandhi to Priyanka Vadra, nothing has changed for anti-national Congress.It was and is dependent on Khalistanis to grab power at the cost of Bharata Mata,” tweeted BJP general secretary CT Ravi.
The Opposition continued to keep the pressure up on the government, citing the viral video. “Modiji Namaskar, have you seen this video that shows son of a minister of your government crushing farmers under his vehicle?” asked Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was detained on Monday on her way to Lakhimpur.
Officials said that the family of one of the dead farmers – Gurvinder Singh -- was not satisfied with the autopsy report and that a re-examination of the body was in progress.
Gurvinder Singh’s family insisted that he died by gunfire. Senior district administration officials confirmed to PTI that his second post-mortem will be conducted at the district hospital. “We don’t want to conduct his last rites after a false post-mortem report,” a relative said.
The bodies of the other four deceased -- Ajay Kumar Mishra’s driver, Hari Om, BJP workers Shyam Sundar and Shubham Mishra, and local journalist Raman Kashyap – were handed over to their families after post-mortem examinations at the district hospital late on Sunday night.
The farmers had gathered on Sunday to protest UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and laid siege to the helipad, leading to cancellation of the meeting. As farmers returned from the protest site, a speeding convoy of three ripped through the crowd around 2.30pm, protesters said. It had a Mahindra Thar in the lead, a Fortuner, and a smaller car.