Mandsaur: As Mandsaur seethes with rage over the killing of farmers and with prohibitory orders in place, Congress vice President Rahul Gandhi has decided to visit the hot spot.
Reports of Gandhi’s arrival came amid conflicting claims from Mandsaur-Neemuch police and administration which claimed that the trip had been cancelled.
Clearing the air, Congress chief spokesperson KK Mishra told News 18 that Gandhi’s trip was not cancelled and that he was on his way to Madhya Pradesh alongwith party general secretary Mohan Prakash.
Gandhi, along with Congress state head Aruna Yadav, Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh and former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan is expected to meet the aggrieved farmers.
Mishra also claimed that several Congress leaders from Malwa were arrested by the police on Wednesday. Meanwhile preventive orders were issued in and around Mandsaur prohibiting outsiders including politicians to enter into the troubled town.
Trouble broke again in Mandsaur’s Piplya as District Collector Swatantra Kumar Singh went to pacify the agitated farmers and ended up being surrounded by them.
Singh was trying to pacify the family of the dead student, Abhishek Patidar, whose body was kept on the road by his family who declined to cremate him. As farmers refused to listen to him, the collector escorted by some of the farmers, tried to leave, only to be slapped by one of the protesters.
The ensuing scuffle ended with the Collector’s clothes being torn.
The Collector later talking to the media reiterated his earlier stand that neither he nor any of the government officers ordered the firing. He too blamed anti-social elements of creating the disturbance. “The situation was under control,” said Singh.
Mandsaur Superintendent of Police, OP Tripathi who also went to Mandsaur’s Piplya, had a similar experience as he was surrounded by angry farmers who wanted to identify those responsible for the shoot out on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, more forces were deployed to Piplya after the incident on Wednesday and CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan called an emergency meeting of ministers in Bhopal.
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