BAREILLY: Shocking videos have started emerging from Lakhimpur Kheri after the violence on Sunday, in which four farmers, two BJP workers, a driver and a journalist were killed during a farm protest. While farmers -- and later thousands of others -- shared a video of a car crushing protesters in its path, those opposed to them posted videos of BJP men being beaten up.
Farmer leaders who had congregated in the western UP district soon after the mayhem have conceded "there was retaliation" after a convoy of SUVs plowed through a marching band of cultivators. One of them had told TOI on record that it was "two BJP men and not three that had been killed". TOI hasn't been able to independently establish the veracity of any of the videos.
In the 29-second video first shared by farmers from the site of the clash, a group of men walks slowly with black flags and banners on a road next to green fields as a siren draws near. A few men turn back and jump aside — a 'VIP' car is speeding ahead into the group of protesters — but most don’t realise what’s coming from behind. An elderly man, later said to be one Nachattar Singh, 63, and a few others are thrown up and then run over by the speeding vehicle, while another follows closely. “We have video evidence that clearly shows this was deliberate. That is what happened. I was there,” Gurpej Singh, a farmer, told TOI.
The video, purported to be from Lakhimpur Kheri, was seen by lakhs on Twitter and shared by thousands, including BJP MP Varun Gandhi and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. “This video of Lakhimpur Kheri farmers being crushed deliberately shakes one to the core. Police should take cognizance and arrest those seen in the car and those associated with them,” Varun Gandhi tweeted on Tuesday. Priyanka, while sharing the video, tweeted, “The individuals killing those who provide us with food have not been arrested. Why?”
In another video the farmers shared, a man gets out of a Thar and starts running while a flurry of men, purportedly farmers, are scrambling in the background. Farmers said that was after the cars had run some of them over. To counter the Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni’s repeated statements that his son Ashish was not at the site where the killings took place and he would resign if anyone proved otherwise, the farmers shared a video in which a man is seen loading a pistol and walking ahead, surrounded by a group of men. That, farmers said, was Ashish leaving the venue. TOI could not verify the claim.
In a video from the other side, a few men, purportedly farmers, are seen trying to turn a vehicle over as others beat up a man on his head while he's lying on the ground, unable to move. In another, a man behind a camera asks a bleeding man, “Teni sent you to kill Sikhs?” Later identified as Shyam Sundar, a BJP worker from Nishad, he replies, “Teni did send me. See the crowds and manage them, he said.” When asked if he was asked to kill people in a staged accident, he looks around and starts pleading, “Dada, dada, dada.” Sundar died later.
Gagan Chattha, another protester who was present there that day, told TOI, “He (Sundar) was not critical. We have a photo in which he is walking with the police after we handed him over.” Sundar’s father Balakram, however, said Sundar was “taken back from police custody and beaten to death with sticks and swords by farmers.”
