Delhi borders tense as ‘locals’, farmers clash
Police lathicharge, lob tear gas shells to control situation
Several people were injured as clashes erupted between the protesting farmers and a group of locals at Singhu on the Delhi-Haryana border on Friday as the police resorted to a lathicharge and used teargas shells to disperse the crowd.
The clashes erupted at Singhu at about 1.40 pm after a group of 200-odd people claiming to be “locals” managed to enter the farmers’ protest site despite the area being blocked by the police. Armed with sticks and iron rods, the group first demanded the farmers be removed from the site. Then they started vandalising the makeshift tents and throwing stones at the farmers.
The protesting farmers retaliated by throwing stones at the locals. The police was then forced to order a lathicharge and use teargas shells to bring the situation under control. Alipur SHO Pradeep Kumar claimed that he too was attacked with a sword by a protester and suffered injuries on his forearm.
Shortly after the clashes at Singhu, similar scenes were reported at Tikri, another Delhi-Haryana border protest site, where a group of people began opposing the farmers’ protests and demanded they vacate the site. The people said they would not allow the national flag to be “insulted”. As the security
forces at the protest site thinned out overnight Thursday-Friday, more farmers from western UP districts like Meerut, Baghpat, Bij-nor, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad and Bulandshahr reached the UP Gate by early Friday morning to join the agitation at the borders of Delhi.