rotests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) took a violent turn in Ahmedabad on Thursday and a group of protesters cornered and targeted a few policemen. At least five Gujarat Police personnel were left injured when they took cover in a small shop on the side of a road and hundreds of protesters started pelting stones on them.
A video of the incident has gone viral and shows the policemen struggling to shield themselves from the raining stones while a few protesters try to calm down the protesters and protect the police personnel.
The protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) staged in the Muslim-dominated Shah-E-Alam area in Ahmedabad turned violent on Thursday.
Police lobbed teargas shells to disperse the mob of around 2,000 persons and protesters shouted slogans and held placards saying “No CAB No NRC”. When the police tried to disperse them, the protesters started throwing stones, bricks and bottles at the policemen.
In the footage that has gone viral, some policemen at the site can be seen taking cover behind moving police vehicles to save themselves from the stones coming from both sides of the road.
Another video showed some people thrashing a policeman who fell down from a moving police bus.
Assistant Commissioner of Police R B Rana was among the policemen injured in the stone-pelting. “I think at least five policemen were injured. I am not sure about the exact number. I was also injured,” said Rana.
Ahmedabad police commissioner Ashish Bhatia said the situation was now under control.
“We will identify the perpetrators and lodge FIRs against them. Barring the stone pelting in Shah-E-Alam area, no untoward incident took place in the city today,” he said.
“We have detained around 32 people. We are registering FIRs. We are identifying others based on CCTV footage. A total of 19 police personnel were injured in the incident,” he said.
Earlier in the afternoon, police baton-charged people who gathered in Sardar Baug garden in Mirzapur area here to protest against the Citizenship Act and NRC.
Police dispersed nearly 200 protesters as they had not obtained permission for the demonstration, and at least 20 of them were detained, said inspector F M Nayab, a local police official.
The protest had been organised by Left parties including CPI and CPI(M) and their associated organisations such as the All India Democratic Students Organisations and Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist).
“We had taken permission for the protest, but it was cancelled at the last minute. However, we had announced yesterday that we will go ahead with the protest,” said Bhavik Raja, member of the All India DSO.
Elsewhere, Muslim outfits took out protest marches in different parts of Gujarat including Morbi and Banaskantha districts, demanding rollback of CAA and NRC.
Alp-Sankhyak Adhikar Manch, an organisation working for the minority communities, had given a call for Ahmedabad bandh on Thursday.
Markets and shops in some Muslim-dominated areas including Juhapura, Jamalpur, Gomtipur and Teen Darwaja remained closed, but elsewhere it had no major impact, the city police said.
In view of the shut-down call, the police on Wednesday had said no rally or protest would be allowed.
