Rajasthan: 15 farmers held for damaging public property

As many as 15 farmers have been arrested for allegedly damaging public property and stone pelting while protesting against land acquisition in Ninder village, the police said today.
The farmers were arrested yesterday on the charge of public property and assaulting or using criminal force to deter public servants from discharging their duties, they said.
A case was registered against Ninder Bacho Sangrash Samiti coordinator Nagendra Singh and four others when a road connecting Ninder village to Jaipur was damaged during the agitation by the farmers.
"A case of damaging public property was registered on the complaint of the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA)," Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Ashok Gupta said.

A separate case was registered against 10 other farmers after stone pelting by them yesterday, the officer said, adding, "For both these cases we had arrested 15 farmers out of which 10 were for disturbing peace.
All the accused were presented before a court yesterday which remanded them to judicial custody, Gupta said.

Recently, farmers of Ninder village had buried themselves neck-deep in the ground for 30 days against acquisition of over 1,300 bighas of land for a housing project, claiming that the compensation offered was not enough.
They had called off their protest on October 31 after receiving written assurance from the JDA about conducting a fresh survey of the acquired land.

The JDA has taken possession of 600 bighas of land so far and deposited Rs 60 crore in a local court as compensation for it after villagers refused to accept the amount, claiming it did not hold up to the prevailing market rates.
Around 10,000 houses will be built under the scheme announced in January 2011.
Zone commissioner Rajkumar Singh said, "The JDA is first developing a colony on nearly 37 bigah of land to rehabilitate the farmers of Ninder village. They had earlier given consent about carrying out work on some part of land."
"The work was today carried out peacefully," the zone commissioner said.