The families of those who died during the ongoing farmers’ protest at the Delhi borders on Thursday said that the protest should not end without getting the laws repealed. They added that leaving the protest midway would be a double loss for them.
“There is no point of leaving the protest midway due to the wrong acts of a handful of the people. It will be double loss for my family as first we lost my father to this struggle and now we cannot afford to lose this protest,” said Gurdeep Singh, son of Sukhdev Singh (64), who died on December 14t while coming back from Singhu border after participating in the ongoing protest. The vehicle Sukhdev was travelling in was hit by a mini-truck near Bhago Majra village (Ditrict Mohali). Sukhdev was a small farmer with five-acres of land in village Dandiana, Fatehgarh Sahib.
“My father was very active and took care of the entire farming operations. I also assisted him but now he is no more and I will not let his sacrifice go to waste,” he said, adding that his trolley is placed at Singhu till date.
Gurdeep said that farmers have been protesting peacefully for the past over two months and they are not goons so that the government should not force them leave.
“Even governments, which have all the authority and means, fail to control the crowd several times and here in our protest if some people did not follow the instructions of the farm leaders then this does not mean that everyone was involved in that shameful act,” said Gurdeep Singh.
“How can one even think of discontinuing this, I have met the biggest tragedy of my life during this protest where I lost my husband and his sacrifice should not go waste. I have two kids to look after – a two and half year old son and five and half year old daughter. My son daily asks me when his father will return from Delhi and also compels me to make a video call to him. It is heartbreaking,” said an emotional Sandeep Kaur (33) from Bhawanigarh, wife of Manpreet Singh (42), who was at Kundli border from November 26 to December 19. Manpreet had fallen ill and later died while returning from Delhi border. Sandeep has no source of income and she lives with her old mother as her in-laws are not ready to take care of her.
“Red Fort incident was an effort to break this protest but now farmer leaders are more vigilant. Now they know the repercussions of leaving this protest midway as it is a bigger fight than this incident. As we lost our loved ones and now we cannot afford to leave,” said Raghubir Singh, brother of Shamsher Singh, who died on January 3 at Kundli border due to heart attack.
He was from village Lidhran, District Sangrur, and was a dairy farmer.
Dr Gurpreet Singh of village Chathe Sekhwan in Sangrur said that he has been participating in protest regularly and said that he has just returned from the protest site and there is no talk of leaving the dharna.
“We have lost our friends to this and the Red Fort incident, which is unfortunate, cannot be used to end this justified protest.
Jagjit Singh, a teacher, said that the Red Fort incident is not acceptable “but that does not mean that such incidents do not occur in other big fights as it is natural that when lakhs of people are involved something can happen somewhere”.
“We are disappointed but we are still fully supporting farmers’ protest and it cannot be ended till the time it will not meet its mission,” he said, adding that a group of teachers is going to support farmers at Singhu soon.
This article is auto-generated by Algorithm Source: indianexpress.com
