[The police are investigating
whether the son of one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ministers was in a
vehicle that slammed into protesters.]
The police have said they are
investigating the deaths of four farmers and four others in the north Indian
state of Uttar Pradesh. Protest leaders said a vehicle plowed into
demonstrators as part of a convoy traveling past the site.
The police said they were investigating whether Ashish Mishra was in the car
that struck the protesters, as the protest leaders have claimed. He is the son
of Ajay Kumar Mishra, India’s minister of state for home affairs.
Ashish Mishra told Indian TV news
channels on Monday that the allegations against him were “baseless.”
Reaching the authorities became
difficult after the state police temporarily shut down internet service in the
area, in an apparent effort to calm tensions.
The incident has injected fresh
political vitriol into protests that have plagued New Delhi, India’s capital,
and the surrounding regions since late November. Huge numbers of north Indian
farmers have occupied protest camps on the outskirts of the capital in demonstrations against
a trio of market-friendly farm laws that they say will put many of them out of
business.
The laws, which have been suspended
by the country’s supreme court, are intended to overhaul a system that
economists call wasteful and ineffective in meeting the country’s needs. But
many farmers fear that the overhaul will undermine government-run markets for
grain, leading to plunging prices. A majority of people in India depend on
agriculture for their livelihood, and the country lacks job growth in other
areas to take up the slack.
Police officials did not
immediately confirm details about who was killed during the Sunday incident.
Local news reports identified three of the others killed as members of the
ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and the fourth as a freelance journalist working
for a TV news network that is sympathetic to the ruling party.
The incident drew further attention
after the Uttar Pradesh police detained Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a leader of
India’s main opposition Congress party who oversees the party’s activities in
Uttar Pradesh. She was detained early Monday after her convoy, taking her to
visit the families of the farmers who were killed, was stopped by the Uttar
Pradesh police.
Ms. Gandhi’s visit to the area came
against the backdrop of an upcoming state election in Uttar Pradesh, India’s
most-populous state, which is seen as a bellwether for the political fortunes
of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Uttar Pradesh was hit hard by the
coronavirus, but its leader, Yogi Adityanath, has been a vocal proponent of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda, and has worked hard to
fire up the party’s Hindu base.
“Either show me a warrant for why
you are detaining me, or I will go from this place,” Ms. Gandhi told a police
officer in footage shared by her party. “There is law in this country, even if
there is none in your state.”
On Monday afternoon, Ms. Gandhi
told the Indian TV news channel NDTV that she had been arrested on charges of
unlawful assembly.
The deadly incident and the arrest
of Ms. Gandhi, the great-granddaughter of India’s first prime minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, are likely to galvanize a new phase of the protests.
Worsening tensions could force Mr. Modi’s government and farmer leaders to
revive negotiations that stalled this spring amid a catastrophic second wave of
Covid-19.
Farmers continued sit-ins and
gatherings through the pandemic and harsh monsoon rains.
The tensions have repeatedly flared
into violence. The worst incident took place in January, when farmers stormed
New Delhi with thousands of tractors and broke through police barricades. In
return, the government sent forces to try to arrest farmer leaders and clear
the tents where they had been camped out for months. However, the sprawling
protest camps remained.
The protests intensified last month
in the state of Haryana, next door to Uttar Pradesh, after a local official was
captured on video ordering the police to use violence to break up one
gathering. The state authorities deployed additional troops and switched off
the internet, but the tensions eased only after the government agreed to
investigate the official’s conduct.
The incident on Sunday took place
in the Uttar Pradesh district of Lakhimpur Kheri after a series of run-ins in
recent weeks between protesters carrying black flags and the elder Mr. Mishra
and his supporters.
Mr. Mishra, who represents the
district in Parliament, warned the protesters to “behave, or we will teach you
how to behave. It will take just two minutes,” according to local newspaper
reports.
In an apparent response to the
statement, protesters tried on Sunday to block a visit by Mr. Mishra and a
state minister from Mr. Modi’s party.
As Mr. Mishra’s convoy was
traveling past the site, a vehicle occupied by his son and others deliberately
plowed into the farmers, according to farmers’ union leaders.
Footage showed two vehicles ablaze.
Mr. Mishra accused protesters of attacking party workers with sticks and
swords.
As farmer leaders, police officers
and top Uttar Pradesh officials converged on the scene, a police barricade was
erected more than a mile away to keep out journalists and opposition
politicians.
Farmer leaders and state officials
agreed on a sum of about $62,500 in government compensation for the families of
the four farmers killed.
“None of the criminals will be
spared,” Prashant Kumar, a top Uttar Pradesh police officer, said at a news
conference on Monday. “Arrests will follow soon.”
Mujib Mashal and Hari
Kumar contributed reporting.
