Khori Village: Police Brutally Lathi Charges and Prevents the Residents from Conducting Mahapanchayat

Haryana police prevented the gathering from holding the scheduled Mahapanchayat citing the imposition of section 144, and later on, resorted to brutal lathi-charge.

khori gaon
Image Source: The Leaflet

Tens of thousands of residents of Khori village, located in Faridabad, which lies at the Delhi-Haryana border are at the risk of being rendered homeless in the middle of an ongoing pandemic and economic crisis.

Calling it an encroachment of the Aravalli forest lands, on June 7, 2021, the Supreme Court of India ordered the Faridabad Municipal Corporation (FMC) to evict the residents of the Khori village basti reiterating its February 2020 and April 2020 order which was put on halt due to the onset of the COVID19 pandemic. The order by the apex court has not outlined any government rehabilitation program to provide housing to those whose houses will be demolished.

On Wednesday, the residents and activists of the basti were supposed to conduct a Mahapanchayat, to protest against the eviction order with Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) chief Gurnam Singh Charuni as its main speaker at the Ambedkar Park in the locality.

However, the Haryana police prevented the gathering from holding the scheduled Mahapanchayat citing the imposition of section 144, and later on, resorted to brutal lathi-charge in which several residents sustained injuries.

Nodeep Kaur, a labour activist and a member of Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan shared a video message on her Twitter account informing that Ravindar and Rajeev Kaur two student activists of Bhagat Singh Chhatra Ekta Manch (BSCEM) who had come to the basti to extend solidarity to the residents were among those beaten and arrested by the Haryana police.

The populace in the area consists mainly of working-class people engaged either in informal jobs such as construction work, domestic work, etc or in daily wage employment mainly in the NCR region and has been already struggling with job losses and no social security net with very limited access to the relief provided by both the state governments.

Previously on June 11, the residents of Khori gaon had staged a protest against the eviction orders and at present many are facing charges put by the police for their participation in the protests.

The Khori gaon area has been barricaded from all sides in order to curtail movement and organization, the residents have complained. The supply of electricity and water has also been cut off by the municipal corporation authorities in order to pressurize the residents into vacating the gaon.

Also read: The saga of Evictions camouflaged as ‘Development’

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1 COMMENT

  1. […] Khori Village: Police Brutally Lathi Charges and Prevents the Residents from Conducting Mahapanchaya… SKM demands that the officials who allowed this “welcoming of the BJP leader” at this particular site, hardly 50 meters from the SKM stage should be identified and punished. The allegations of weapons being found, and vehicles being damaged are obviously, political diversionary tactics. A complaint has been lodged by the protesting farmers at the local police station. […]

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