MillenniumPost
Delhi

Lawyers to the rescue of family members of arrested farmers

Lawyers to the rescue of family members of arrested farmers
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New Delhi: With around 120 people arrested so far in connection with the Republic Day violence during the farmers' tractor rally, as per the official records, while several others being picked up or reported missing, lawyers at various protest sites have now emerged as a guiding force by helping families locate their kin and filing bail applications.

Several camps have been set up at the Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri borders, which aim to provide pro bono legal aid to farmers and making them understand the provisions under which their family member been detained or arrested and also try and help them locate the police station where their kin has been

held up.

At one such camp set up behind the main stage at the Singhu border, called "Advocate for Farmers", three lawyers, all in their twenties, attend to a farmer who claims that his 23-year-old son has been missing from the protest site since January 30 and that he and his wife have since been concerned about his whereabouts.

"He used to protest separately with his friends around the protest site and never slept with us inside our trolley...however, suddenly on morning of January 31, we noticed that he was missing from the protest site and have been searching for him since then," said Chamkaur Singh (57), hailing from Patiala.

"His mother has been crying since he went missing and it was becoming difficult to get information about our son until we met these lawyers," Singh told Millennium Post.

One of the lawyers, Hasan Kaur Gill (26), who started practising at the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2017, said that there had been a meeting of 2,000 lawyers on January 31, where it was decided that legal aid camps will be installed at all the three borders as the police have started detaining and arresting persons in connection with the Republic Day violence.

She further said that out of a total of 170 people picked up by police, as per her sources, and they have been able to obtain information about 124 persons so far. "Today we have been able to obtain the whereabouts of eleven more such persons," she added.

The three lawyers said that they are part of a seven-member team, each of which is deployed on all the three borders, and simultaneously coordinates with other teams deployed at courts, hospitals and police stations in order to help their clients.

"While three of us sit here and compile data of farmers who have been picked up, two of our team members travel from trolley to trolley, asking whether any person has been reported missing in the past few days, following which they give us a call conveying the information," she said.

Another lawyer, Sukhveer Kaur Brar (27), said that they have been facing challenges in dealing with these cases as police is "not cooperating" in providing them information. "When we have been going to police stations with our clients, seeking information about the FIRs lodged against them, police deny us the details and ask us to file an RTI for the same...how many RTIs can we file?" Brar asked.

Brar said that she hails from a family of farmers and understands the sentiments of people at the protest site. "My parents encouraged me to take up their cases and even I felt strongly about it," she said.

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