The police in Punjab’s Bathinda on Wednesday lobbed tear gas shells at a group of farmers who allegedly threw stones at police personnel during a protest, PTI reported.
The farmers, who are members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan), were seeking the release of two of their jailed senior leaders. They staged the protest in the village of Jeond.
The farmers initially held a sit-in protest on the Bathinda-Chandigarh highway, due to which traffic was disrupted, The Indian Express reported quoting unidentified persons. Ahead of the agitation, there was heavy police deployment in and around Bathinda to prevent protesters from moving towards the Bathinda District Administrative Complex.
The farmers had then shifted the demonstration from the highway to an internal village road in Jeond. However, when they later tried to move towards the city, they were blocked by the police, who fired tear gas shells at them, according to The Indian Express.
Bathinda Senior Superintendent of Police Jyoti Yadav Bains alleged that the protesters were throwing stones at the police from rooftops.
“The mob showed aggression, but we contained it,” Bains was quoted as saying by PTI. “The situation is under control.”
A protester, however, claimed that the police lobbed tear gas shells and and threw stones without provocation.
Shingara Singh Mann, the head of the of Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan) in Bathinda district, described the police action as unprovoked and excessive.
“The police attacked us while we were gathered peacefully in a village ‘dera’,” Mann was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “They didn’t even spare a religious place. They demolished the shed of a villager, and his six goats were killed.”
He alleged that a young protestors was forcibly taken into custody from the site, and homes in adjoining villages were raided.
The two farm leaders whose release was being sought were among those arrested in connection with a clash in Jeond in January 2025 over a long-standing land dispute between original landowners and tenant cultivators, The Indian Express reported.
They have been lodged in the Bathinda jail since April.
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