Chennai: The lathicharge on peaceful protestors in Chennai on Friday has evoked widespread anger among several sections of the people and leaders of the Muslim community are demanding 'immediate and proper action' against the police personnel responsible for it.
'Action means not a transfer to another police station but severe disciplinary proceedings that would ensure that such things do not happen again, said Dawood Miakhan, who organization, Tamil Nadu Platform for People's Unity, would also pursue the matter.
Miakhan, the grandson of the legendary political leader from Tamil Nadu, 'Quaid-e-millet' Muhammad Ismail, told DC that the government should pass a resolution in the state Assembly against CAA and NCR, which alone would wash away the blot on the AIADMK caused by its support to the bill in Rajya Sabha.
To drive home the point that police action was an excess, he quoted B R Ambedkar's remarks in the Constituent Assembly while winding up the debate on the Uniform Civil Code in 1948, 'No government can exercise its power in such a manner as to provoke the Muslim community to rise in rebellion. I think it would be a mad government if it did so.'
Friday's attack on protestors, including women, had put the Tamil Nadu government on the level of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, where the police come under the control of the Union Government, in repressive action against people demonstrating their democratic rights, Miakhan said.
The protest against the Centre's anti-people moves through CAA and NCR at Washermanpet was not held at the main road and it was not hindering the smooth flow of traffic too. The local people were sitting outside their homes in the streets and bylanes and the police cracked down on them without any provocation.
He said male relatives of the women sitting on protest on the streets, who had come to the area after dark fearing the personal security of the agitators, were needlessly arrested by the police, who tried to paint the episode as a threat to law and order.
Miakhan regretted that an elderly person died due to the police action. The man had come out of his house, hearing the commotion and was probably crushed in the melee triggered by the sudden police lathicharge that send the people scrambling for cover through the dark narrow streets.
The incident had huge impact that it brought people to the streets in protest instantly from Chennai to Kanyakumari.
