We are farmers’ daughters, Bilkis Bano reportedly said before leaving for the protest.
New Delhi:
Bilkis Bano, the octogenarian who became the face of the months-long anti-citizenship law protest in the capital’s Shaheen Bagh locality, was on Tuesday stopped by Delhi Police from joining the ongoing farmers’ agitation against the Centre’s new agricultural laws.
“We are daughters of farmers, we’ll go to support farmers’ protest today. We will raise our voice, the government should listen to us,” Ms Bano told ANI before she heading for the Delhi-Haryana border.
Ms Bano, popularly known as the Shaheen Bagh dadi, was, however, stopped by the police at the border point at Singhu.
“She was stopped at the Singhu Border and was escorted by the police back to her home in southeast Delhi,” a senior police officer said, according to PTI.
Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting in and around Delhi demanding a repeal of three agricultural laws brought in by the central government in September.
At the peak of the Shaheen Bah protest last year, Ms Bano was recognised by Time magazine one of the 100 most influential people of 2020, alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bollywood actor Ayushman Khurrana.
During that protest, the 82-year-old sat under a tent with hundreds of women and children, braving the extremely cold weather. The protest at Shaheen Bagh ended in March this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
