An anti-CAA protest by Muslims turned violent on Friday in Chennai when a group of protesters clashed and pelted stones at police, leaving four personnel injured.
Reportedly, the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act turned violent at Washermanpet in Chennai. During the violence, four police personnel including a woman joint commissioner, two women constables and a sub-inspector were injured in stone-pelting.
Joint Commissioner P Vijayakumari sustained injuries on her head, the police said, adding that those wounded were admitted to a hospital.
Earlier, some agitators were reportedly removed from the protest site forcibly, leading to a commotion between them and the police. The protesters accused the police of resorting to a lathi charge.
Reportedly, some of the protesters were detained. Subsequently, more people gathered there demanding their release. As a result, security was beefed up in the area.
Hours after the Chennai police resorted to lathi-charging the violent protestors at Washermenpet in Chennai, hundreds of members of Islamic outfits took to the streets and blocked roads at many places in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on Friday night.
Large numbers of people occupied key junctions in Madurai, Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Salem, Tiruchi, Vaniyambadi, Tirupathur, Krishnagiri, Villupuram and many other places in the State condemning the “police assault”.
Later the detained protesters were released after a meeting between police authorities leaders of the Muslim organisations. Subsequently, they called off the agitation. “An amicable decision was arrived at in the meeting with Muslim organisations and they have announced that the agitation will be withdrawn,” a police officer said, adding that normalcy had returned to the area.
In the aftermath of the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), several incidents of riots, violence, arson and vandalism by Muslim mobs in the name of ‘protests’ against the enactment of the law have taken place across the country.
The Muslim mobs have descended into the streets with the active support of the opposition parties and a certain section of ‘liberal-secular’ media and unleashed violence under the garb of ‘protesting’ against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which has no bearing on the existing citizens of the country.
