Indian National Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi was arrested Thursday as he tried to forcefully enter the Madhya Pradesh state's Mandsaur city, where five have been killed in violent protests led by farmers, NDTV reported.

The 46-year-old Congress party leader was taken into preventative custody by police near the Rajasthan border as he tried to enter the city with crowds of Congress supporters, even though police had barricaded the area.

According to NDTV, Gandhi, in his attempts to enter the city, swapped his car for a bike after police stopped his car at the Rajasthan border, which about 180 kilometres away from Mandsaur.

Gandhi, the scion to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that ruled India through its Congress Party for decades, was stopped again by police and thereafter set out on foot through the fields. He was then taken to a guest house that served as a makeshift jail.

“Rahul Gandhi has been bailed out of the jail,” Manoj Kumar Singh, the police chief in the bordering Neemuch district, told AFP.

Thousands of farmers in the state governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have for days been calling for loan waivers and a floor price for crops as economic and weather conditions pinch profits.

The strikes turned violent Tuesday and five farmers were killed by police gunfire.

Gandhi — forced to shout to reporters as police led him away — blamed Modi for the farmers' deaths.

"Modi waived money for the elite but he cannot waive farmer loans. He can only give goli [the bullet] to farmers," NDTV quoted Gandhi as telling reporters.

"What law of the land says that it is illegal to stand in solidarity with farmers who were killed simply for demanding what is their right?" Gandhi had said in a tweet earlier.

"Raj and Madhya Pradesh governments are doing their best to prevent me from entering Madhya Pradesh and meeting the families of the farmers killed in Mandsaur," he wrote in a subsequent tweet.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had accused Gandhi of exploiting the farmers' protests for political gain.

Madhya Pradesh is one of several largely agricultural Indian states that have suffered disappointing rains and crop failures in recent years.

More than 1,600 farmers killed themselves in Madhya Pradesh in 2016, official figures show. India has nearly 260 million farmers and farm labourers, and agriculture accounts for 17 per cent of the gross domestic product.