Lakhimpur Kheri: Heartbreak And Tears As Families Try To Cope With Personal Grief

It is a typically mild, autumnal morning on October 4, 2021, in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district. Four glass, refrigerated caskets lie on an 11 feet-wide road in Tikonia, the outermost area of Lakhimpur Kheri. They bear the bodies of the farmers who lost their lives in the violence.

Women, their eyes swollen from incessant weeping, stand nearby. Their faces, stricken with grief, betray the harrowing ordeal they have been through the past two weeks. A few metres away stands an old farmer continually trying to wipe his eyes with a parna (a short piece of cloth used to cover/clean the face), but it can’t keep up with the tears that ceaselessly roll down his wrinkled visage. Gurvinder Singh, his son, lies in one of the caskets.