Anti-CAA activists protest police action against rioting mob at AMU, Jamia
16 Dec 2019
Anti-Modi forces seem to have succeeded, at least partly, in whipping up ant-government sentiment among activists and anti-national elements in the country by organising riots in select places in the garb of protests over the recently passed Citizenship Amendment Act.
Anti-CAA activists, backed by Mamta Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the Left, the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress and some extremist Islamic groups like SDPI are protesting police action on rioting mobs at the Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Milia Islamia as well as in Delhi and West Bengal to vent ire on the Narendra Modi government passing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)
On Sunday, flash mob of students of the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia university led by an AAP MLA held a protest march which ended in clashes with the police.
Protesters torched four public buses and two police vehicles in Delhi as they clashed with the police at New Friends' Colony, near Jamia Millia Islamia, leaving nearly 60 people, including students, cops and fire-fighters, injured.
Delhi Police used batons and teargas shells to disperse the violent mob, but denied firing at them. However, video clips of purported police firing, injured students in the university bathroom as well as footage of them bleeding emerged on social media.
It is still unclear who started the violence but stones were thrown at the police who retaliated with tear gas.
The rioters set ablaze at least three buses and several motorcycles.
University students distanced themselves from the violence and some police officers privately admitted that local troublemakers were behind the trouble, the BBC's Kinjal Pandya reports.
In fact, parents are reported to have asked students from the two campuses to return home, in a bid to avert rioters from using students as a shield.
The university said police later entered the campus without permission and arrested some students.
Police said they did what was necessary to stop the protests.
Schools near the university in southern Delhi have been asked to remain closed on Monday.
The CAA allows persecuted non-Muslims from Muslim countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who entered India illegally to seek safety, to remain in the country and become citizens.
The nationalist BJP government argues that the law aims to accommodate those who have fled religious persecution, the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan reports from Delhi.
Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of CPI (M), organised a statewide protest march on Sunday night in Kerala against the police action on the students of Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, who were went on the rampage against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
Activists of the youth wing of the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala stopped the train service at Kozhikode.
"Nearly 75 activists took out a protest march to the railway station," a city police official told PTI.
Meanwhile, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan joined a sit-in "satyagraha", along with opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala of the Congress, against the amended Citizenship Act today.
"Together, we will fight the CAA. Kerala's fight against the tyrannical act will see a bipartisan coming together of parties in Govt and opposition. We will be sitting on a Satyagraha in Thiruvananthapuram. Join us in defense of our democracy. We must resist & #WeWillResist," Vijayan said in a tweet.