India deploys arsenal against farmers’ protests

Outside the barricaded checkpoints in Delhi, tensions between farmers and authorities have reached fever pitch. The level of response to the grievances has been unwarranted and cruel.

Seventy-one-year-old Jaspal Singh, who lives near the India-Pakistan border in Punjab’s Tarn Taran district, sustained a leg injury during farmers’ protests at the Shambhu Barrier. ‘I have never seen brutality of the kind I have encountered at the Shambhu Barrier,’ he said from his hospital bed.

Singh had joined the farmers marching to the capital to demand the repeal of controversial agricultural laws when police forces unleashed a barrage of tear gas and smoke grenades.

Jaspal has a lacerated wound on his right leg and is being treated at the emergency ward of a government hospital in Rajpura town. He was part of the protesting crowd standing half a kilometer from the heavily guarded barrier when a tear gas shell dropped by a drone hit him. ‘I lost consciousness for a few minutes. Then I was brought here for treatment,’ he said.

The Shambhu Barrier, where farmers gathered as part of their ‘Delhi Chalo’ protest only to be stopped by Haryana security forces, is near Rajpura. Many…