The Delhi Lt-Governor also gave clear instructions to the police chief to take other steps to ensure that law and order is firmly under control at the protest site.
In the backdrop of the forthcoming Delhi assembly elections, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal has directed Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik to ensure outsiders and suspicious characters are thoroughly frisked before they can access the Shaheen Bagh protest side. Baijal’s clear directive comes against the backdrop of a shooting incident just 50 metres from the stage earlier in the day.
The Delhi Lt-Governor also gave clear instructions to the police chief to take other steps to ensure that law and order is firmly under control at the protest site.
Baijal’s instructions, Delhi Police sources said, were designed to prevent any repetition of the unsavoury shooting incidents.
The two incidents of firing come just days before the national capital is to vote on February 8, heightening the sensitivities around the protest and the possibility that any incident at Shaheen Bagh was bound to be amplified by rival sides.
Baijal is learnt to have spoken with Patnaik soon after a young man fired shots in the air on Saturday evening. He was immediately taken into custody. Sources said Baijal had suggested that the police extensively put up barricades around the protest site to enable cops to control access and frisk outsiders.
Saturday’s incident of a young man firing in the air was the second time in three days that a firearm has been fired at the protest side.
On Thursday, a teenager from Jewar in Uttar Pradesh had turned up at the protest site with a country-made pistol. He opened fire at the crowd, injuring a second-year postgraduate student.
The protest at Shaheen Bagh against the amended citizenship law started last month after Parliament enacted a law that empowers the government to fast-track citizenship requests from refugees belonging to the religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Prasanta Patnaik