India: Man shoots at Delhi protesters, 1 student hurt

ANKARA

An unidentified man shot and injured a student outside India’s premier Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) university in the capital, New Delhi, on Thursday, local media reported.

Brandishing a pistol in full glare of Delhi police and media, the man shouted towards the protesters: “Yeh lo azadi” – meaning “this is your freedom” – before firing multiple shots, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The shooter was later detained by police but his identity remains unconfirmed.

JMI and the nearby Shaheen Bagh neighborhood have taken center stage in India’s protests against the Narendra Modi-led government’s new citizenship law which discriminates against migrant Muslims.

"We were moving towards the Holy Family Hospital where the police had put up barricades. Suddenly, a gun-wielding man confronted us and opened fire. One bullet hit my friend's hand," a JMI student told PTI.

The injured person was identified as Shadab Farooq, a mass communication student at JMI, and officials confirmed he was shot in his left hand. He has been admitted to the trauma center at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

Shadab is from the Jammu and Kashmir region.

Protests against controversial citizenship law

The students were continuing their protest against the new citizenship law enacted last December. Reports said they were supposed to march to the memorial of India’s founding father, Mahatma Gandhi, but were stopped just outside JMI.

India is observing the 72nd anniversary of Gandhi’s death on Thursday.

Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin, was a member of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which provided the ideological foundation for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Since Dec. 15, when India’s parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the south New Delhi locality of Shaheen Bagh has become a focal point for protesters, drawing parallels with Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square, the site of anti-government demonstrations over the decades.

There have also been massive demonstrations denouncing the law across India during which over 25 people have been killed, hundreds injured, and property worth millions damaged.

The law granting citizenship to non-Muslims who migrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan is believed to discriminate against India’s 180 million Muslim population.