In the wee hours of Thursday, a man was burnt alive and later, succumbed to his injuries after visiting the Tikri border where farmers and middlemen are protesting against the farm laws by the central government. The 42-year-old person from Kasar village has been identified as Mukesh. Reportedly, casteist slurs were hurled at him before the farmers set him on fire. In fact, villagers say that this was a conspiracy to make him appear a ‘martyr’ against the farm laws.

After coming under severe criticism for the spate of rapes, molestations and now, a man being burnt alive, Kisan Ekta Morcha, the organisation spearheading the violent protests at Tikri border released a video claiming that Mukesh had set himself on fire. They claimed that any version to the contrary is “BJP propaganda”.

In the video, Mukesh is seen in a charred state, sitting in pitch darkness. While being burnt fatally, a farmer is heard interrogating him about who set him on fire. After prodding, Mukesh, in that state of pain and trauma, says that he set himself on fire because was tired of his family issues.

While the “farmers” are using this to conveniently exonerate themselves, there is another, clearer video where Mukesh is giving his dying declaration while being treated in the hospital.

In this video that has been accessed by OpIndia, Mukesh is heard clearly identifying his assailants saying that the farmers present at the Tikri border set him on fire.

In this video, Mukesh clearly says that that the farmers at the Tikri border, specifically a man in white kurta, set him on fire. The police official asks him specifically if he set himself on fire or it was the farmers who set himself on fire. To this, he clearly says that it was the farmer and he did not set fire to himself.

According to the events that transpired, Mukesh was burnt alive at 3:00 AM in the morning. If we go by the video that the Kisan Ekta Morcha has put up, it stands to reason that right after he was set on fire, presumably the very people that perpetuated the crime were interrogating him while he was in excruciating pain.

Logic dictates that Mukesh was delirious owing to the pain and was also scared, since those who burnt him, or at least those who were shielding the people who burnt him, were interrogating him. One would imagine that the only thing on his mind was surviving with whatever little life he had left and making it out of there alive.

The second video accessed by OpIndia clearly shows that before he succumbed to his injuries, Mukesh declared that he was burnt by the farmer present at the Tikri border.

Man burnt alive at Tikri border: Details of the case

The incident took place at Kasar village near Bahardurgarh in Haryana. During wee hours on Thursday at 3 AM, some protesting ‘farmers’ at the border splashed fuel on Mukesh and set him on fire. He was immediately rushed to the hospital where he succumbed to the burn injuries.

As per a police complaint by one Madan Lal, on Wednesday at around 5 PM, Mukesh had gone out and reached the protesting farmers’ site. Madan Lal later got to know that Mukesh was set on fire. He reached the site along with Sarpanch Toni Kumar and saw Mukesh being badly burnt.

Farmer protest site has turned into a crime hot spot

This is not the first time that such crime incidents are being reported from the ‘farmer’ protests site along the borders surrounding the national capital. The ‘farmer’ protests site has lately turned out to be a crime hotspot as several allegations of rape, murder have surfaced from the site in the last few months.

In April, a 26-year-old anti-farm law protestor was murdered by a fellow farmer protestor near Kasar village near the Tikri border in Delhi. The victim has been identified as Gurpreet Singh, who was protesting against farm laws at the Tikri border. Singh was murdered by a fellow protestor Ranbir Singh alias Satta Singh over a monetary dispute.

Similarly, on March 25, a 60-year-old farmer named Hakam Singh was found dead with a slit throat. According to the police, Singh was murdered using a ‘sharp-edged weapon’. His dead body was discovered by other anti-farm law protestors in a field behind the new bus stand at the Tikri border. Incidents of rape have also been reported.

References:

OpIndia