MUMBAI: As chants of “Vote chor, gaddi chhod” (“Vote thief, vacate your seat”) rang out, the old and historic neighbourhood of Nana Chowk in South Mumbai spontaneously turned into a fortified protest site on Saturday.
Police also used a drone to monitor the gathering. The Mumbai Police made sure that did not happen. The detainees include Tushar Gandhi, his daughter Kasturi Gandhi, actor Imran Khan, Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Varun Sardesai, and CPI leader Prakash Reddy. Around two dozen police vans lined the streets and kept carting away citizens. Protestors raised slogans wherever they were halted. When police attempted to disperse protesters beneath the Nana Chowk flyover, some climbed the structure and continued shouting slogans, only to be detained there as well. The slogans grew sharper as the detentions continued. Police also stopped bystanders, sought identity cards and questioned people in the vicinity, asking them why they were there.
More than 300 police personnel chased citizens supporting the CJP-led protest in Delhi against Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar; they broke human chains forming spontaneously; and stuffed protestors into waiting police vans before carting them off to seven police stations. Police claim around 600 citizens were detained in Mumbai on Saturday – around 400 at Nana Chowk and 200-odd elsewhere in the city. The police crackdown began at 3.45pm as waves of protesting citizens poured into the area.
Sloganeering protesters banged on police vans and continued their protest inside the vehicles, in one instance breaking the door before escaping, witnesses said. “Jab-jab Modi darte hain, police ko aage karte hain” (‘Whenever Modi is afraid, he puts the police in front’), protesters shouted as police led them away. Some were allowed to leave, while “suspicious” bystanders were detained.
On Saturday, the maidan was to be the site of the protest organised by Hum Bharat Ke Log, a civil society collective led by Tushar Gandhi, veteran activist and great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, in support of the CJP-led agitation in the national capital.
