The state of Punjab’s revenue officials had marked 26 April 2016 to evict Baljit Singh and his family from their house and land in village Jodhpur, district Barnala. That morning, at around 11 AM, so confident was the arthiya—a commission agent—Teja Singh from the nearby Cheema village that he came to the site to evict Baljit and family while the police and revenue officials that oversee the eviction were yet to reach. Teja, a former policeman, was accompanied by his sons, Jaspreet Singh Jassa and Manpreet Singh Manna, as well as two other men, one of whom was his nephew. Armed with the kabza warrant—possession order—to evict Baljit Singh, they barged into Baljit’s house.
In 2002, Baljit’s father, Darshan Singh, also a small farmer, had borrowed Rs 1.8 lakh from Teja. For this loan, he mortgaged his land—roughly two acres—on which his house was also located. Darshan was unable to pay the loan, and after he died in 2012, his debt was transferred to his son. Due to extreme poverty and changing interest rates on the loans, Baljit had been unable to pay back the debt for many years. That morning, Teja demanded that Baljit and his family vacate the premises and hand over the land. Baljit pleaded with him for a little more time, but Teja did not relent. A scuffle broke out between them. Meanwhile, hundreds of policemen, with revenue officials—the tehsildar; the patwari, a land-record clerk and his supervisor, the kanungo—had turned up. “It’s because Jassa is a district office holder of the Shiromani Akali Dal’s”—Punjab’s ruling party “students’ union, Student Organisation of India,” said Manjit Singh Dhaner, the state vice president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union-Dakonda, a farmer’s group. Over a hundred activists from BKU-Dakonda were also present. According to news reports, the superintendent of police for Barnala, Swarn Singh Khanna, stated, “These were court orders. The police have to perform its duty according to law and procedures. We had to take action.”
When BKU activists tried to prevent the eviction, they were arrested. This is when Baljit ran to the roof of his small home, with a bottle of pesticide in his hand. Villagers milled around his house and pleaded with him to come down, but he gulped down the contents of the bottle, and collapsed. When his mother Balbir Kaur saw what happened, she too consumed poison. The police and villagers rushed the mother and son to the Civil Hospital in Barnala. Balbir Kaur was declared dead on arrival. The doctors referred Baljit Singh to Rajendra Hospital, Patiala, but he died on the way.
COMMENT