Protests against citizenship law continue in Bengal, road and rail blockade at several places

Road and rail blockades continued in different parts of West Bengal on Saturday by people protesting against the amended Citizenship Act.

Incidents of violence were reported from Murshidabad and North 24 Paraganas districts, and rural Howrah, police said.

The National Highway 34, one of the arterial roads that connect north and south Bengal, was blocked in Murshidabad. Several other roads in the district were also blocked, they said.

In Howarh district's Domjur area, the National Highway 6 was blocked as protester set tyers ablazed and ransacked several vehicles, the police said.

Huge police contingent has been rushed to the spot to control the situation, they said.

Train movements were also blocked in the Sealdah- Hasnabad section of the Eastern Railway.

The agitators are staging sit-ins on the tracks at Shondaliya and Kakra Mirzapur stations of the section since 6.25 am, a railway spokesperson said.

On Friday, a mob, carrying posters against the CAA and the proposed National Register of Citizens, vandalised the Beldanga railway station of Eastern Railway in Murshidabad district, forcing the railway employees to flee.

The protesters torched the station master's cabin and ransacked the ticket counter before setting it on fire.

They also sat on the track, disrupting train movement between Lalgola and Krishnanagar.

Another large group of protesters obstructed the National highway at Beldanga, burning tyres and damaging vehicles, including an ambulance.

Vehicular traffic was halted at various points of the district, including Jalangi, Raghunathganj, Sahmserganj, Kandi, Baharampur and Domkal.

In Howrah district, angry protesters barged into the Uluberia station under South Eastern Railway and vandalised its premises.

The mob earlier blockaded the track, adversely hitting train movements on the Howrah-Kharagpur section on both up and down lines.

The Howrah-Coromondol Express and the Howrah-Digha Kandari Express were damaged in the attack.

Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar appealed for peace and asked people to believe in the rule of law and the laws passed by Parliament and described the violence as unfortunate.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has blamed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, accusing her of spreading lawlessness through her statements opposing the CAA.

BJP National General Secretary in-charge of the state Kailash Vijayvargiya alleged that the "shameful incidents" in Bengal were engineered by the infiltrators.

Besides West Bengal, the northeastern region, especially in the states of Assam, Tripura and now Meghalaya, have witnessed widespread violent protests against the CAA.

Before becoming a law, the CAB was passed by both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to provide Indian nationality to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh with a cut-off date of December 31, 2014.

with agency inputs