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Farmers in India have vowed to step up their months-long protest against laws aimed at liberalizing agriculture, as tensions are increasing after 9 people were killed in the Lakhimpur Kheri district of northern Uttar Pradesh.
The Uttar Pradesh government announced on Monday that it would provide 4.5 million Indian rupees (US$60,530) in compensation to the families of victims of Sunday’s violence. The state government also stated that a retired high court judge will investigate the incident.
At the same time, farmers decided to intensify their protests against the controversial agricultural law.
“We will strengthen our agitation in Uttar Pradesh and other parts of the country to highlight the plight of innocent farmers,” Damendra Malik, a senior leader of the Awami League of India, told Reuters.
“The government may try to discredit this 10-month-long campaign, but we will keep peace in the struggle.”
The son of a federal minister was accused
Officials and farm leaders said that on Sunday, four farmers died when a car owned by Federal Minister of the Interior Ajay Mishra ran over protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri Town, Uttar Pradesh.
Farm leaders stated that Misra’s son was in the car when the car ran over the protesters, but the junior interior minister denied this.
Misra said that his driver and the three ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in the car were killed by protesters in the violence that broke out after the incident.
“They were beaten to death by farmers,” Mishra said in a statement.
The police also said they found the body of a local journalist at the site of the violence on Sunday, but did not provide more details about how he was killed.
Farm unions in Hyderabad protest Sunday’s killing [Mahesh Kumar A/AP]On Monday, the police filed criminal proceedings against 14 people, including the minister’s son, for the deaths of four farmers.
Arvind Chaurasia, a senior official in charge of the area, said that the BJP also filed criminal proceedings against protesting farmers over the deaths of its members and car drivers.
The farm leader hopes to take action against the minister and his son, saying that Misra should be removed from office.
The violence marked the escalation of continued protests against agricultural laws, which farmers said would destroy their livelihoods. Since the government passed the law in September last year, the protests have continued and have been one of the biggest challenges facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Last week, thousands of farmers gathered on the fringe of the capital New Delhi to commemorate the passing of their so-called “black law”.
The government stated that the law needs to be amended to modernize agriculture and promote production through private investment.
But farmers say the law will destroy their income by ending guaranteed pricing and will force them to sell crops to companies at cheaper prices.
Police officer Arun Kumar Singh told the Associated Press that all schools in the area had been closed after the violence in Rahim Burkeri, 200 kilometers (124 miles) southeast of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, and suggested People stay indoors.
The authorities also banned gatherings, suspended Internet services, sent additional troops, and banned opposition leaders from entering the area to meet with farmers because they feared that this might lead to further chaos.
The police detained several opposition figures on their way to the scene, including Priyanka Gandhi of the Congress Party.
In Lucknow, the police also detained Akhilesh Yadav, the former chief minister and local Samajwadi party chairman, outside his home.
Television footage showed that dozens of opposition supporters staged protests in the city and set fire to at least one police car.
Protests organized by opposition parties also took place in New Delhi and Bangalore.
Continuing farmers’ protests against the law were basically peaceful, even though the clash in January resulted in the death of one protester and hundreds of injuries after demonstrators broke through police barricades and rushed into a historic fort in Delhi.
Thousands of farmers have set up camps on the outskirts of New Delhi for more than 10 months. More than a dozen rounds of talks between the government and farmers have failed to solve the problem.
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