Suicide at farmer rally: ‘He tried to draw attention, but nobody was listening’

As Singh climbed higher, some below asked him to stop. The attention, however, was fleeting and everyone soon turned towards the stage. Wearing a red turban and wielding a broom, Singh perched on the branches. Most mistook him for an eager Kejriwal supporter trying to get a better glimpse of the Chief Minister who had arrived a few moments earlier.

Gopal Choudhary, an eyewitness, said, “Once he went up, he just sat there on his haunches for a while. Most of us turned our attention to the stage.”

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In the next 15 minutes, however, Singh seemed to want catch the attention of those below. He began waving his hands and speaking, but the words were drowned by the speeches from the dais.

“He seemed to want to draw attention to himself. But nobody seemed interested. Even as he tied a towel around his neck, he continued to shout, but he was so high that we could barely hear him,” an eyewitness said.

Soon though, as Singh went motionless, even those on the dais began to sense something amiss. But the 20-odd police personnel —— standing in a semi-circle around the “guest teachers” to prevent any violence — did not move.

Singh hung motionless for close to 10 minutes before five men, one wearing an AAP topi, began the risky climb to reach him. They took almost 10 minutes to cut him loose and lower him from the branch from which he was hanging. They dropped him onto a tarpaulin stretched out by the crowd to break the fall. Even as he was rushed to hospital, an angry crowd converged on police. That was the only time the personnel moved from their semi-circle.

As these events unfolded, on a green dais with a white background was the AAP brass. Leaders who took the microphone — Sanjay Singh and Kumar Vishwas in particular — first asked the farmer to come down and not divert attention from the agitation. Vishwas even suggested that they had seen such “political distractions before”.

Soon, their voices grew urgent, prodding volunteers to go help and repeatedly asking police “to do their work” unless they were working according to a “a pre-conceived plan”.

The AAP programme went on for an hour even after Singh was brought down and rushed to hospital. News that Singh had died was even read out to the crowd by Vishwas.

Sanjay Singh, Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal wrapped up their speeches before heading to the hospital where other politicians had already started converging.

As Kejriwal spoke, many of the protesting guest teachers pulled out black flags and chanted slogans. Next to them, on the tree sat one of the five who had helped bring Singh down, tears streaming down his face.