At 7 pm on Friday, 13 December, a group of protesters had gathered near Marine Drive in Mumbai, hoping to begin a demonstration against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. But their plans were foiled by the Mumbai Police, which denied permission for the protest, detained some of the protesters and dispersed the rest.
Former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan and activist Fahad Ahmad were among the protesters who were whisked away from the venue in police vehicles by the cops. In an act of defiance, the protesters registered their dissent against the police’s decision by reading out the Constitution to them.
The Mumbai Police then proceeded to disperse all the other protesters from the venue by 7:15 pm.
Kannan Gopinathan has recently resigned from the IAS over his disagreement with the government’s actions on Article 370, and has been a vocal critic of the Citizenship Amendment Act and plans for a nationwide NRC.
The Quint’s efforts to record a conversation with several protesters, even at some distance from the initial spot where they had gathered, were stalled twice by the police as they asked us to move further away, eventually instructing us to go to the other side of the nearby Churchgate Railway Station and conduct the interviews.
Watch our YouTube live and listen in to the what the protesters had to say about the Citizenship Act, internet shutdowns and police crackdowns seeking to quell protests in several parts of the country, especially in the Northeast.
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