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Two-year-old Abhinav plays with the CNN-News18 microphone. He prattles into it, looking straight into the camera, and then gives the mike to his grieving mother, insisting that she stop crying and say something. Abhinav had often seen his father Raman Kashyap do the same while at work.
Raman, 35, was a teacher at a local school: Modern Gurukul. But he was passionate about news, and so five months ago he started reporting for a TV channel. On Sunday he had gone to cover the farmer protests in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district as part of his assignment. He never returned.
ALSO READ | Lakhimpur Kheri Violence: Complaint Lodged Against Farmer Leader Tejinder Singh Virk
His mother, Santosh Kumari, recounted the horrific 12 hours that the family spent looking for him and eventually found his body at the local police thana. “He left home at 12 noon…around 3 we got to know about some tension at the farmer protest but we had no idea that he was injured. His phone was not reachable. We put up photos asking for some information about him. All night we kept searching….fellow reporters also came back but there was no word on him. In the morning, at 3 am, police called asking us to identify a body. It was him,” she told CNN-News18 at their Nighasan residence.
His wife Aradhana added, “He was completely blood-soaked…his body had gittis (road construction material) riddled in it.”
Farmers, who have been protesting in parts of the country since last year over three new agricultural laws of the central government, had assembled to stop the visit of union minister Ajay Mishra Teni and UP’s deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.
The Kashyaps believe Raman was hit by a vehicle, leading to his death. His father told CNN-News18 that the reporter was denied medical attention. “His injuries were not that serious. Had they taken him to a hospital he would have lived but they put him in the ‘shav vahan'( hearse van),” he said. Ram Dulare denied that Raman had any bullet injuries. “There were drag marks on the body of Raman; he was hit by a car,” he said.
Farmer groups have alleged that Teni’s son Ashish mowed down 4 protesters and Raman. Just outside the Kashyap residence, a plaque thanks the union minister and local MP for inaugurating a pucca lane.
About 25 kilometres away from Nighasan, at the chaukda farm, Luvpreet Singh’s family is also upset with the administration. The 20-year-old farmer was also allegedly mowed down by a speeding vehicle. Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait visited the area even as Luvpreet’s body lay in the village square. Locals questioned the truthfulness of the post-mortem report and the deadlock was broken only after assurances from the administration.
Opposition leaders like Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi have accused the administration of being insensitive. She has held fort at Sitapur, demanding permission to travel to Lakhimpur Kheri to meet the bereaved families.
ALSO READ | How TMC Defied Odds to Reach Lakhimpur & Meet Deceased Farmers’ Kin
But families of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers who lost their lives in the violence ask why she has no empathy for them.
The father and brother of Shubham Mishra, a booth-level worker at Lakhimpur Kheri who was allegedly lynched by angry protesters, told CNN-News18, “Are we terrorists? Why doesn’t Priyanka Gandhi want to meet us? Those who were part of this protest were not farmers but lawbreakers.”
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