CHANDIGARH, Feb 21: A 21-year-old farmer was killed and a few others injured following a clash between security personnel and protesting farmers at Khanauri on the Punjab-Haryana border.
Farmer leaders said this was the first death in clashes since the ‘Delhi Chalo’ march began on February 13.
The victim has been identified as Subhkaran Singh (21), a resident of Baloke village in Punjab’s Bathinda district, farmer leader Baldev Singh Sirsa said.
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Patiala-based Rajindra Hospital’s medical superintendent H S Rekhi told reporters that three people, one of them dead, were brought to the hospital from the Khanauri border point.
He (Singh) had an injury to his head, Rekhi said and added that condition of the other two is stable.
Farmers in Khanauri, one of the two protest sites on the Punjab-Haryana border, claimed that Haryana police personnel fired rubber bullets, besides tear gas shells to disperse protesters.
Tear gas shells were fired to disperse farmers from Punjab at Shambhu and Khanauri border points as they tried to move towards barricades stalling their protest march to Delhi.
Thousands farmers resumed their agitation two days after the fourth round of talks with the government over their demands, including a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) for crops and farm debt waiver, failed.
Since February 13, farmers are gathered at the border points along with their tractor-trolleys, mini-vans and pickup trucks.
Heavy earthmoving equipment, including excavators, and modified tractors were seen at the protest sites, with police cautioning that these might be used to break barricades and cause harm to security personnel.
The farmers are also demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations, pension for farmers and farm labourers, no hike in electricity tariff, withdrawal of police cases and “justice” for the victims of the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence, reinstatement of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, and compensation to the families of the farmers who died during a previous agitation in 2020-21. (PTI)
