Crackdown triggers fear in MP villages
BAHI PARSAVNATH AND BALAGUDA VILLAGES WERE THE EPICENTRE OF FARMERS’ PROTEST WHERE POLICE FIRING ON JUNE 6 LEFT 5 DEAD
service will be launched soon for their benefit. Besides this, he promised a scientific system to evaluate milk prices, agriculturist markets in civic body zones, and kisan upbhokta kendras (farmer-consumer centres) at every panchayat.
Farmers were also assured that their land would never be acquired (for development work) without their consent.
Breaking his fast with a glass of coconut water offered by former chief minister Kailash Joshi, Chouhan said: “Peace has been restored in Madhya Pradesh, and no case of violence has
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Fear stalks the narrow cemented roads of Bahi Parsavnath and Balaguda, the two Patidar-dominated Madhya Pradesh villages on the Mhow-Neemuch highway, where a police crackdown is on.
The two villages, which are 15km away from Mandsaur, were the epicentre of farmers’ protest where police firing on June 6 left five people dead after which angry farmers set fire to scores of trucks along the highway. The toll rose to six after an injured farmer died on Friday.
It is about 3pm on Saturday when HT team reaches Bahi Parsavnath.
There is no curfew but the choupal, by the side of the village temple, is deserted. We see a young man peeping from a house nearby and call him. He walks towards us tentatively but relaxes a bit when we tell him we are from the media and want to know whether police made arrests in the village.
“I thought you were police in civil dress because of the white SUV you are travelling in,” he says.
Slowly, people start appearing from all sides and surround us, eager to share details of police action in the last two days. A few women, all of them veiled, watch from a distance.
“More than 50 men in blue uniform in four vehicles came to the village with two policemen from the local police station and started beating people mercilessly,” says a villager.
Police picked up three men,
CONTINUED ON P 5 HOW NOTE BAN GOT FARMERS ONTO THE STREETS ››PAGE 7