As angry farmers take to New Delhi’s streets, protests turn violent

Thousands of protesting farmers poured into New Delhi on Tuesday as they used their tractors to pull barricades apart, prompting police to fire tear gas and throwing into chaos an event that posed a direct challenge to the government.

The farmers protesting India’s new farm laws had been expected to start a procession of tractors through the city at noon local time, to avoid interfering with morning celebrations marking India’s Republic Day holiday in central Delhi. But farmers began to dismantle barricades about two hours early amid some apparent confusion among protesters.

The protest had already threatened to upstage the annual celebration of the inception of India’s Constitution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi oversaw a lavish military parade, and news channels showed surreal scenes of Modi saluting officers as chaos broke out in several parts of the city just a few miles away.

As evening fell in New Delhi, at least one person had died and many parts of the city still felt under siege. It was unclear whether the security forces, or the farm leaders who appeared to have lost control, could push the protesters out of the city and back to the campsites they have occupied for the past two months at the capital’s borders.

“Farmer agitators broke the agreed terms and started their march much before the agreed time,” the Delhi police said in a statement, confirming that several members of the force had been wounded, without providing numbers. “The agitators chose the path of violence and destruction.”

Large groups of tractors and protesters broke away from the approved protest routes — tipping over buses and violently clashing with overwhelmed police officers armed with bamboo batons — as they marched toward central Delhi.

By early afternoon, Delhi police commanders had deployed officers carrying assault rifles.

Local television channels showed farmers placing the body of a protester in the middle of a road nearby. They said the man had been shot, but that could not be independently verified.

In September, Modi rushed through parliament three farming laws that he hopes will inject private investment into a sector that has been troubled with inefficiency and a lack of money for decades. But farmers rose up, saying that the government’s easing of regulations had left them at the mercy of corporate giants that would take over their businesses.

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