BHOPAL, January 28: A team of People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has expressed concern over the attempts by the Betul district officials at erasing the signs of the wanton police firing on agitating farmers at Multai on January 12 and has suggested entrusting the matter for investigation to the CBI so that the real culprits are not allowed to go scot-free.The team visited Multai, Betul and Paramandal on January 24 and talked to a total of 46 persons, some of them injured in the police firing or witnesses to the incident. The team says in its interim report that the tehsil office building has been white-washed and the signs of the police firing erased.The team told The Indian Express that the judicial inquiry, already ordered by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, would not serve the purpose as it would take two to three years to complete and the guilty officers would have ample time to tamper with the evidence. The sequence of events, according to the report, is: the farmers of the area,affected by adverse weather conditions for the past three years and hard hit by the excessive rains of the past few months, assembled at Paramandal, about two km from Multai, on December 12 and decided to seek help from the government. Accordingly, a memorandum was submitted to the SDO at Multai. Another memorandum was submitted to the collector at Betul on December 15. On December 18, the farmers formed a Sangharsh Samiti and held a rally at Multai on December 25. It was attended by some 3,000 farmers. They started a dharna, after putting up a shamiana on the Multai tehsil office premises, from December 26. It was a non-political agitation. The report quotes some eye-witnesses as saying that two stones were hurled by the police from the roof of the tehsil office on the agitators who then retaliated by throwing stones at the police.
