‘We saw farmers being literally crushed’: Anger against BJP cuts across caste, religion in rural UP

On Tuesday, when the internet sputtered back to life in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri, the graphic videos of Sunday’s events that had left eight people dead finally began to trickle in on WhatsApp.

In Jagsar village, men gathered in the courtyard, initially reluctant to speak to this reporter. “Who knows what happened – everyone is saying all sorts of things,” said one of them. “The ghatna sthal (location of the incident) is quite far, even if it was in our district.”

Indeed, the district of Lakhimpur Kheri is sprawling. About 150 km north of Lucknow, on the border with Nepal, it is by far the largest district in Uttar Pradesh. And Jagsar village is over 100 km away from Tikunia, where videos show a group of protesting farmers being mowed down on October 3 by a convoy of vehicles associated with India’s minister of state for home affairs, Ajay Mishra Teni of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The First Information Report filed by the police states Teni’s son, Ashish Mishra, who was travelling in one of the vehicles, opened fire on the farmers, killing a 20-year-old farmer. Three other farmers died, and in the violence that followed, four people lost their lives.

But speaking to reporters on…

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