New delhi: As protesters at the Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri borders prepared for their tractor march on Monday evening, staying up till the next morning, playing music and dancing, in excitement for the tractor rally — about 5,000 tractors had left from Baghpat district to join their fellows at the Ghazipur border and march with them into the Capital. Sandeep Chaudhary (41), an army man retired from service after 19 years, from a family of army men and farmers had left his village with much excitement for the tractor rally and had decided that come what may he would make it to the Ghazipur border to join the rally. What Chaudhary did not know was that within 24 hours, he would end up occupying the Red Fort after having faced incessant tear-gas shelling, lathicharging a night of uncertainties before setting out for the rally. The crowd of over 6,000 to 7,000 farmers from Baghpat had left together. While not all were from the same village, they had decided to gather people and tractors from their district and march to the Capital. However, the Delhi Police was quick to throw a spanner in their works as they hit a massive roadblock on the Loni border into Delhi. Chaudhary said in the dark of the night, none of them noticed the broad belt placed on the road with dark slim, 10-inch iron spikes poking out. "They tricked us by first saying we can join the other farmers at Ghazipur and when we got to the border, they incapacitated our tractors," Chaudharys friend from the village over said, as he stood at the Ghazipur border at 4 am on Tuesday morning, looking at punctured tractor tyres. Chaudhary said that the first line of tractors was tricked onto the spikes and had their tyres punctured. However, this did not deter the farmers who have already been leading their own sit-in protest against the Centres three farm laws for the last 40 days in Baghpat. At around 11 pm at night, some elders from Chaudharys district managed to find a mechanic and got him to fix the tyres and by 1 am, they were on their way once again. They had already traversed areas in Seemapuri before arriving at Ghazipur to join the others. When asked whether they would remove barricades if police stopped them from marching, they nodded enthusiastically and said no force could stop them from marching. But by the time Chaudhary and his neighbours realised where they were going, they were already on the Outer Ring Road, going towards ITO. By 3pm, Chaudhary had reached the ramparts of the Red Fort. But after the Smyukta Kisan Morcha directed all farmers to return to their original protest sites, all the tractors from Baghpat along with Chaudhary decided to turn back from Red Fort around 8 pm on Tuesday. Some of the farmers, however, refused to leave and were engaged in negotiations with the police at the time of writing.

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