Shot fired at Delhi protest against citizenship law, one hurt

Friday, 31 January 2020 00:02 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

New Delhi (Reuters): An unidentified man fired at a protest against India’s new citizenship law near a university in Delhi on Thursday, wounding a student, witnesses said, the first such incident in the capital during more than a month of demonstrations.

Witnesses said the man holding a gun shouted slogans against the protesters near Jamia Millia Islamia University, before firing at them.

“The police stood nearby,” Ahmed Zahir, a witness, told Reuters.

A Reuters photograph showed the man, dressed in a black jacket and brandishing a single-barrel weapon, standing metres away from dozens of policemen outside the university, where more than 1,000 protesters had gathered for a march.

Police later said they had detained the suspected gunman but gave no details.

Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which fast-tracks Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from three neighbouring countries, have flared since last December.

Some of the biggest protests have taken place near the university, which police stormed in December. On Thursday, police barricaded the road outside the university.

A group of students, most of them women, were holding a sit-in near the barricade after they were stopped from marching to a memorial for independence leader Mahatma Gandhi on the anniversary of his assassination in 1948.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government insists the citizenship law is needed to help members of persecuted religious minorities who fled to India before 2015 from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

But protesters say the law, and a proposed national register for citizens, discriminates against Muslims and violates India’s secular constitution.