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17 December, 2019
By SJA Jafri + BBC
NEW DELHI/ MELBOURNE: Indian police have denied shooting people during protests in Delhi – as anger at a citizenship law spreads across the country.
At least three people said they were shot, but police said their wounds were caused by broken tear-gas canisters.
The BBC has seen the hospital report of one person who thought he was shot. The report said doctors removed a “foreign object” from his thigh.
The new law offers citizenship to non-Muslims from three nearby countries.
Many of the injured were participating in protests at universities in Delhi.ten people, many of whom have “criminal backgrounds”, have been arrested, Delhi police said on Tuesday. Amid criticism for using “excessive force” inside campus premises, they added that no students were detained.
Police say locals who lived near the campus had joined the protests and attacked officers.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a petition against the police action inside Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, where they allegedly attacked students inside campus premises, including the library and toilets.
Chief Justice Sharad Bobde said the top court did not have to intervene since it was “a law and order problem”. He also told lawyers to file petitions in trial courts.
More protests are expected to take place throughout Tuesday in universities across cities including Varanasi, Hyderabad, Chennai (formerly Madras) and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
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” but some say the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is discriminatory and part of a “Hindu nationalist” agenda to marginalize India’s 200-million Muslim minority.
Others – particularly in Border States – fear being “overrun” by new arrivals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
During clashes at the Jamia Millia Islamia University on Sunday, there were reports of at least three people being shot by police.
A hospital spokesperson said two people were admitted with bullet wounds, according to local media – something denied by police.
The BBC has seen the medical report of a third person – who said he was a passer-by, not a protester – who thought he had been shot in his thigh.
The report confirmed only that a “foreign object” had been removed under sedation. The injured man told the BBC he saw police shoot at him with a pistol or revolver.
Delhi police have said they had not shot anyone, either with live or rubber bullets.
During the protests, vehicles were set on fire and tear gas was fired.
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.
Police said they acted with “maximum restraint, minimum force”.
At least six people have died since the protests began in the north-eastern state of Assam on Thursday.
Apart from those who are receiving treatment in Delhi, one student from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, who was injured in police action, has had to have his hand amputated.
Mohammad Tariq, a PhD student in chemistry, told BBC Hindi’s Priyanka Dubey that he had been studying inside the campus library when police stormed in.
“When I ran out, I was hit on the hand by a piece of a tear-gas shell,” he said.
Doctors told BBC Hindi that they had no choice but to amputate his hand – the one he writes with – because the injury was a grave one and the infection was spreading.
There is no consolidated number of how many people have been injured in protests across the country, but doctors told BBC Hindi that at least 80 students in AMU had been admitted to hospital with injuries.
This is in addition to at least 50 people who are known to have been injured in Delhi.
The anger has spread across the country, with protests reported at more than a dozen universities.
Many of the student demonstrations were fuelled by the perceived police brutality on Sunday.
Students in Delhi, the southern city of Chennai and Varanasi in the north protested against the government and in support of their fellow students at Jamia Millia Islamia.
Footage from the northern city of Lucknow on Monday showed students throwing stones at security forces, who threw the stones back.
Officers were also seen hitting students with sticks.
In Kolkata, tens of thousands of people joined a demonstration led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her ruling Trinamool Congress party, marching against the law itself.
On Monday, Modi sent four tweets to defend the law.
He said it was passed by both houses of parliament with “overwhelming support”, and that it illustrated “India’s centuries old culture of acceptance, harmony, compassion, and brotherhood”.
“I want to unequivocally assure my fellow Indians that CAA (the law) does not affect any citizen of India of any religion,” he added.
But Rahul Gandhi – Modi’s defeated opponent in the 2019 election – said both the law and a controversial citizens’ register were “weapons of mass polarization unleashed by fascists”.
On Sunday, a group of women were filmed in Delhi trying to protect a male friend from being attacked by police.
Ladeeda Farzana, one of the groups, told the BBC that she was protesting because “everyone knows” that the law “is against Muslims”.
“It is not going to happen to me and those girls, it is going to happen to every Muslim in this country,” the 22-year-old added. “Please be aware, come out, be together and fight against this.”
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) offers amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from three neighboring Muslim-majority countries.
It amends India’s 64-year-old citizenship law, which currently prohibits illegal migrants from becoming Indian citizens.
It also expedites the path to Indian citizenship for members of six religious minority communities – Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian – if they can prove that they are from Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh. They will now only have to live or work in India for six years – instead of 11 years – before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship.
It also says people holding Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards – an immigration status permitting a foreign citizen of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely – can lose their status if they violate local laws for major and minor offences and violations.
Opponents say the law is exclusionary, is part of an agenda to marginalize Muslims, and violates the secular principles enshrined in the constitution. They say faith cannot be made a condition of citizenship.
However, the government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says they are only trying to give sanctuary to people fleeing religious persecution.
