Protesters attack bus, train stations in India over citizenship law
Violent mobs in India's northeastern state of Assam torch buildings and clash with police, leaving two dead and 11 with bullet wounds, as protests grow over a new citizenship law for non-Muslim minorities from some neighboring countries.
Protesters also attacked train and bus stations in India's northeast, authorities said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government has said the Citizenship Amendment Bill, approved by parliament on Wednesday, was meant to protect minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Protesters in the northeastern state of Assam, which shares a border with Bangladesh, say the measure will open the region to a flood of foreigners. Others said the bigger problem with the new law was that it undermined India's secular constitution by not offering protection to Muslims.
Police fired tear gas in Assam's main city of Guwahati to break up small groups of people who were demonstrating in the streets, defying a curfew imposed on Wednesday.
The citizenship amendment law grants Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before 2015.
Protesters vandalized four railway stations in Assam and tried to set fire to them, a railway spokesman said. Train services were suspended, stranding scores of passengers. IndiGo said it had canceled flights because of the unrest in Assam.
(Source: Reuters)
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