Daily US Times, Delhi: Anger spread across India as the government passed new Citizenship law. Police brutality also surfaced amid high tensions and protests.
Many people got injured during the protest. Students from different Universities in Delhi joined the protests.
At least three people said they were shot by the police what police have denied. Police claimed their wounds were caused by broken tear gas canisters.
The BBC has seen one persons’ medical report where it said the doctors removed a ‘foreign object’ from his thigh. The person thought he was shot.
The new citizenship law creates a lot of controversy and anger. Critics said its against the most fundamental value of secular India.
Ten people have been arrested in Delhi. After criticism police confirmed none of them is students; rather, they all have ‘criminal backgrounds’. Police are being criticized for using ‘excessive force’ inside campus premises.
The Supreme Court will hear a petition on Tuesday against the police action inside Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University where they allegedly attacked students inside campus premises like the library and toilets.
The university’s vice-chancellor Najma Akhtar said that 200 people were injured. But police put the number at 39 students hurt, with 30 officers also injured – one of them critically.
More protests are expected to take place in the days ahead across cities including Varanasi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata.
The new law offers citizenship to the non-muslims from nearby countries.
According to the act, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014, and were facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants and will be given Indian citizenship.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ‘the new law was “for those who have faced years of persecution outside and have no place to go except India.’
Some say the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is discrimination against Muslims and part of a ‘Hindu nationalist’ agenda to marginalize India’s 200-million Muslim minority.
The border states are fearing of being overrun by the new arrivals of neighbouring Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. These states are protesting aginst any kind of migration.
Dozens of Universities already joined the protest, and many more are expected to join in recent days. The student demonstrations were fuelled by the perceived police brutality on Sunday.
Tens of thousands of people joined a demonstration in Kolkata led the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her ruling Trinamool Congress party, marching against the law itself.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Affairs minister Amit Shah urges people to calm down and intended to hear their voices.
Modi tweeted ‘I want to unequivocally assure my fellow Indians that CAA [the law] does not affect any citizen of India of any religion.’
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi criticized the government for polarising the nation. He said both the law and a controversial citizens’ register were ‘weapons of mass polarisation unleashed by fascists’.
Amit Shah said, ‘The CAA is to give citizenship to refugees facing religious persecution, it is not to take away the citizenship of any Indian.’