Photo retrieved from: www.washasia.com
“Four farmers were killed in police firing as a protracted farmers’ agitation against an urban water-supply project in Pune district turned violent on Tuesday afternoon.
Several farmers and 20 policemen were injured, two of them seriously. More than 300 protesters were rounded up.
A strong crackdown restored traffic on the blocked Pune-Mumbai expressway, Pune rural police said.
Around 1.30pm, more than 400 villagers, agitating for years against an urban water supply project they fear will divert water meant for farming, clashed with police. Encircled by the mob, a police officer opened fire, the superintendent of police (Pune rural) Sandeep Karnik said.
“We fired in self-defence,” he said. “There was unfortunately no option…. When our men pleaded with them to disperse and lift their blockade, some of them pelted them with stones from behind.”
The dead, who include a woman, have been identified as Moreshwar Sopan Sathe, 40, Shyam Waghu Tupe, 40, Maruti Barku Khirode, 35, and Kantabai Ankush Thakar, 45.
Karnik said an inspector and an additional SP were among the policemen injured.
The farmers of Gahunje village, 40km from Pune, have been opposed to the project since 2008 when work on it started. They stepped up their resistance recently when it emerged the authorities had been working silently on the project that will ensure 24-hour drinking water supply to urban dwellers under a civic body run by Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.”
Read more: The Telegraph
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