Chandigarh, June 16 (IANS) Perturbed over the fate of the agitation of farmers against three contentious farm laws, a 55-year-old marginal farmer on Wednesday allegedly committed suicide by consuming poisonous substance at a protest site in Jind district of Haryana.
The victim, Zile Singh, had been actively involved in serving food to farmers at the protest site on the Khatkar toll plaza for several months.
He is survived by his wife and three children.
Farmers at the protest site told the police that Zile Singh was under depression for the past few days over the fate of the agitation.
District BKU leader Azad Singh said Zile Singh was alone at the protest site when he committed the suicide at night.
In the morning when farmers arrived at the protest site they found him lying on the bed in an unconscious condition. A bottle of poison was recovered from there, he added.
After Upendra Kushwaha and Sanjay Singh, Umesh Thakur, the Siwan district president of the JD-U, jumped into the fray and said that Pandey has a long criminal history. He had also molested a young girl in a train.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Friday condemned the Congress government in Punjab for allegedly discriminating against teachers and forcing them to come to the streets, and asked state Education Minister Vijay Inder Singla not to behave in an 'arrogant' and 'dictatorial' manner and resolve the grievances of government school teachers immediately.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal on Thursday demanded a high court monitored probe into the manner in which the Congress government in Punjab was playing with the people's lives by creating an artificial shortage of vaccines by selling vaccine doses at a hefty profit to private hospitals.
The electronic conversation took place as US President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that India will receive Covid vaccines directly from the US stockpile, the White House said.
The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General M.M. Naravane, reached Kashmir on Wednesday on a two-day visit to review the prevailing security situation in the Union Territory (UT), the army said in a statement.
"There have been several unfounded media reports that have peddled misinformation among the masses regarding this exercise of national importance," a ministry statement said, adding that the total number of Covid vaccine doses administered in the country so far stand at 21,85,46,667.
