Hundreds of protestors blocked a key highway leading to Delhi in western Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday after they were allegedly stopped by police from moving to the national capital to join the farmers' stir against the new agriculture laws. The protesters, belonging to districts like Rampur, Pilibhit and Moradabad had gathered on the National Highway-24 at the Rampur-Moradabad border in the afternoon amid heavy deployment of police personnel.
Some of the protesters mobbed the official vehicle of a senior police officer while some others confronted other personnel during the chaos that led to a long traffic jam, according to purported videos that surfaced on social media. One of the videos showed a senior police officer leaving the site in a Toyota Innova but was waylaid by scores of protesters, prompting its driver to reverse it in a rush as the mob kept banging the exteriors of the car.
According to a Moradabad police official, The law and order situation broke out after the protesters outnumber the personnel deployed on the highway to control the crowd. The NH-24 runs over 400-km and connects Delhi with Lucknow via Ghazipur in Ghaziabad, where some farmers from western UP are camping since more than three weeks, demanding the repeal of the three contentious farm laws.