Rakesh Tikait detained by Aligarh Police on way to Greater Noida for farmers' protest

Aligarh (UP): BKU leader Rakesh Tikait was detained by the Aligarh Police on Wednesday while on his way to Greater Noida to participate in a meeting of farmer leaders, a police official said.

The Bharatiya Kisan Union's influential spokesperson and his associates were taken to the Tappal police station in a bus after they were stopped from proceeding on the Yamuna Expressway.

When contacted, an official spokesman of the Aligarh Police confirmed that Tikait had been "detained" but "not arrested".

Tikait told reporters that the police were preventing farmers from going to Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar by forcing them to stay in their respective houses.

"How long will you detain us? If you keep us locked, then with whom will you talk?" he said.

He warned that if this approach of the authorities continued, the agitation of the farmers would intensify.

The BKU had on Tuesday convened an emergency meeting at the Kisan Bhawan in Sisauli village of Muzaffarnagar under the leadership of its chief Naresh Tikait and resolved to extend support to the farmers in Noida and Greater Noida who are agitating over the issue of land compensation and other demands.

The BKU had called on its workers and members from western Uttar Pradesh districts to gather at the Zero Point in Greater Noida on Wednesday, according to the union's youth wing president Anuj Singh.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protestors from villages gathered at the Zero Point in Greater Noida on Wednesday. The villagers have been protesting against the administration and local authorities demanding compensation and other benefits in lieu of their land acquired by the state government in the past.

The Gautam Buddh Nagar police had on Tuesday arrested over a hundred protestors during the agitation. The women and the elderly people who were among those held were released later in the day, police Commissioner Laxmi Singh said.