Indian state deploys police against POSCO protesters

The battle over India's largest foreign direct investment project took a turn for the worse, as the government of the eastern state of Orissa deployed 12 platoons of police against people protesting the acquisition of their land for Korean steel giant Posco's massive planned refinery, India Today reports.

Earlier, Orissa declared a human barricade formed by the protesters on the village boundary as illegal. Protesters including women and children had been holding siege at Gobindpur village for the past couple of weeks to prevent the entry of police and government officials, the magazine said.