A large crowd of protesters throw stones at a train and vandalise the station as the Citizenship Act provokes unrest across India.
The new act entitles citizenship to some non-Muslim migrants from three Muslim-majority countries.
This footage was filmed on December 13 in Uluberia.
Protests over the amended Citizenship Act is spreading like jungle fire across India. What was so far searing through the northeastern states, particularly in Assam, has now started to singe the East Indian state of West Bengal.
Like Assam, Bengal also shares a porous border with Bangladesh. And it is believed millions of Bangladeshi immigrants have crossed over to the Indian side and settled in the border districts, allegedly changing the demography of the area.
The agitators resorted to violence and arson on Friday at railway stations and thoroughfares across the state, seeking immediate revocation of the law. People in the Muslim-dominated districts of rural Howrah, Murshidabad, Birbhum, parts of Burdwan and North Bengal hit the streets in the morning, raising slogans against the Narendra Modi-led union government in Delhi.
In Uluberia, a Muslim-majority town of Howrah district, agitators blocked railway tracks and vandalised stations, leaving several passengers stranded during the day. Several trains were vandalised by the stone-pelting crowd that swooped over the train tracks and railways station. The visuals show protestors attacking 12841 Howrah-Chennai Coromandel Express and suburban locals. The demonstrators, numbering around 250, obstructed the Up and Down lines at Uluberia station and hurled stones at the stranded trains, injuring a driver, South Eastern Railway spokesman Sanjoy Ghosh said.
The railways have sought adequate forces from the state government to protect the station premises in violence-hit areas of the state.
The anti-Citizenship Act demonstrators also blocked NH-6 and burned tyres and tubes at Uluberia. With Indian national flags in hands, they gathered at the Uluberia checkpost around 2.30pm and blocked the highway, one of the arterial roads that connect Kolkata with the rest of the country.
Indian President Ram Nath Kovind had on Thursday given his assent to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, turning it into an Act. According to the amended Act, non-Muslim refugees, who escaped religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and moved to India before December 31, 2014, will be granted Indian citizenship.
