Bhopal: A 19-year-old youth, who was one of the six people injured in police firing in Mandsaur last year during the farmers’ unrest, was arrested on Sunday on charges of smuggling poppy husk.
Rodsingh Sondhiya, a resident of Narayangarh in Mandsaur, was nabbed while he was transporting 32 kg poppy husk (doda chura) on his bike, police said. “We had received specific input that a local man was carrying poppy husk and we managed to nab the young farmer,” an officer from Narayangarh police station said.
SP Manoj Singh said that the arrest was the vindication of the police and administration’s stand that several anti-social elements were involved in the farmers’ protests in June last year.
Rodsingh and five others had sustained grievous injuries during the police crackdown in Mandsaur on June 6, 2017, and had later received Rs 5 lakh each as compensation from MP government, which had faced massive backlash over stringent action taken against agitating farmers.
Police said that during interrogation, the 19-year-old had given the name of one Shayam Prajapat who had supplied him the illegal drug. He was supposed to drop it at a dhaba in Neemuch, close to Mandsaur, police said. “We are probing the accused’s other links after booking him under relevant sections of NDPS Act,” the SP said.
Poppy straw is grown at several places in Mandsaur and Neemuch. It is later crushed into husk, which is supplied to drug addicts in several states.
BJP leader Rajnish Agrawal also claimed that the arrest proves the party’s earlier stance that anti-social elements had hijacked the farmers’ agitation, and this led to the police firing.
Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi, however, opined that the ruling BJP could easily frame innocent farmers in such cases to defame the farmers’ stir.
A few days ago, the commission formed by Shivraj Singh Chouhan government to probe the Mandsaur firing incident had given a clean chit to the policemen charged with opening fire on protesting farmers on June 6, 2017.
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