The video plays on a loop in Parsera Bujurg village of Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh. It shows a man in white shirt and blue jeans injured and lying face down in a field, being beaten with sticks until he is motionless.
The man in the video was 26-year-old Hari Om Mishra, one of the four people killed in violence after an SUV belonging to Union minister Ajay Mishra Teni ran over four farmers.
Hari Om stands accused of being at the wheel when the SUV mowed down a group of farmers from behind, killing four of them, in Lakhimpur’s Tekunia. The farmers were returning from a protest against the new farm laws. Multiple videos of the vehicle charging into the farmers have also gone viral.
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Hari Om’s family says there is no video evidence that the 26-year-old was the one driving the Thar jeep, but add that there is video proof of him being “killed by those who claim to be farmers”.
“Why are only they farmers and not us? Our family is also into farming. Hari Om’s younger brother Shri Ram tended to the fields. Our earning from agriculture was not enough so Hari Om took up driving as a job,” says his cousin Govind Mishra.
Hari Om had been driving Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra’s car for the past seven years. The family says his salary of Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000 was a huge part of the family income.
The family home is a single hall, the only room shared among his two sisters, brother, parents, and their cattle. Two cows are tied at one end of the room. Hari Om’s father, who suffered a paralytic attack two years ago, rests on a cot a few meters away. A few chairs make up the rest of the furniture.
At the other end of the room, Hari Om’s mother is in shock.
Echoing the family’s agony, Hari Om’s sister-in-law Shilpi Mishra says, “The Gandhis, the Yadavs have gone to meet the farmers. Why ignore us? We have lost a bread-earner too. This is mass murder because without Hari Om, this family will not survive.”
On Thursday, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had said that she had also wished to meet the families of BJP workers killed, but was told by the police that the families did not want to meet her.
The only political visitor this family has received so far is local MLA Manju Tyagi, who handed them a compensation cheque of Rs 45 lakh. The state government has also promised a job to Hari Om’s brother Shri Ram. While the family is thankful for the help, it is hurt that minister Ajay Mishra Teni or his son Ashish Mishra have not called. A photograph of Hari Om with the minister is on display at the family’s home.
Ashish Mishra faces arrest in the case and has been summoned on Friday for questioning. Both Ashish and his father have maintained that he was not present at the spot during the incident.
The family says Hari Om had been driving Ashish Mishra around ever since Ajay Mishra got a ‘sarkari’ driver after he became minister in July this year. “We don’t know whether Monu bhaiyya (Ashish Mishra) was with him or which car he drove. But his body was unrecognisable. His face was smashed. We recognised him through his clothes,” says a sobbing Shilpi Mishra.
In a daze, Hari Om’s mother Nisha Mishra recounts her last conversation with her son, about getting her the Covid-19 vaccine dose. “Itna tadpa tadpa kar maara usko, isse accha to goli maar dete,” the semi-conscious mother says, before falling back on the cot.
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