Nearly 60 People Injured In India During Protests Over New Citizenship Law - Reports

NEW DELHI (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th December, 2019) About 60 people, including police officers, were injured during clashes that unfolded on Sunday night between law enforcement officers and students in the Indian capital of New Delhi over a controversial law expediting citizenship to all sects but Muslims, media reported.

According to the Hindustan Times newspaper, the Jamia Milia Islamia University became the epicenter of the unrest after the Indian parliament passed a bill last week that fast-tracked citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who had fled from neighboring Muslim countries before December 2014. Muslims themselves were excluded from the bill.

The law provoked the discontent among Indian Muslims, who believe that the amendments violate the constitution, as it oppresses a group of citizens in a formally secular country on religious grounds.

The residents of the country's north-eastern states were also angered, fearing that now millions of people from Bangladesh could legally settle in their regions, which, according to the organizers of the protests, could threaten the interests of the local population.

On Sunday evening, Muslim students in New Delhi began to stone houses, set vehicles on fire, block roads and agitate their classmates to engage in clashes with the police, according to the media outlet.

The police, in turn, used batons and tear gas to disperse the protesters, and nearly one hundred people were detained on the student campus overnight. Many have already been released.

Due to the unstable situation, all of the educational institutions in the southern quarters of New Delhi will remain closed on Monday, and additional police and army units have been deployed to this part of the city.