NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Tuesday temporarily shut the iconic Red Fort and sealed the northern and western borders with unprecedented deployment of force that was manning the area 24x7. The Red Fort became the central point of the farmers’ protest two years back.
An ASI official told this newspaper that the UNESCO World Heritage Site was “suddenly sealed” late Monday night without any intimation.
Asked when the 17th-century monument will reopen, the official said that it depended on the security agencies. “We have written to the police asking them about it,” said the ASI official.
Delhi has multiple roads that connect it to the nearby states among which the Singhu border in the north, the Tikri border in the west, the Ghazipur border in the east and the Gurugram border in the south were the main focus of the police. Among these four, the police had completely sealed the Singhu border and Tikri border and prohibited traffic from plying from either side of the road.
At Singhu, the police had placed multiple layers of iron barricades that had barbed wires rolled over it. The traffic was stopped from both sides around 12.30 pm after farmers clashed with the Haryana Police at Shambhu border, 190 km away in Ambala. As soon as the information about Shambhu reached Delhi, cranes started lifting cement boulders that were then kept in the centre of the road to stop the traffic. At the Tikri border too, police sealed the road from both sides around 3 pm, blocking the traffic with cement blocks.