KOLKATA, June 27: Indian police on Friday fired tear gas and beat villagers protesting land seizures who had tried to force their way into a factory owned by India’s Tata Motors.

Tata Motors, a unit of Indian conglomerate Tata group, plans to launch the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, later this year from its new factory at a 1,000-acre complex in Singur, a cluster of villages near Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.

Villagers, who say the car plant has forced them from their farmland, threw stones at police in the communist-ruled state on Friday and tried to damage a boundary wall of the factory, officials said.—Reuters