90-Plus Arrested After Day-Long Protest, Kolkata Police Searches For More

The Kolkata Police are on the lookout for a number of people after daylong clashes in the city over the massive protest march to the state secretariat. Altogether, 94 people have been arrested and another 25 taken into preventive custody, the police said.

The police posted the images of the people they are looking for on Facebook. It appeared a group of seven or eight men and a woman. In one of the shots, one person appeared to be throwing stones. In another they are seen running.  

The protest march to the secretariat -- Nabanna Abhiyan -- saw an outpouring of anger of the road which could not be quelled with police batons or tear gas.

The protest was organised by a little-known student organisation. The ruling Trinamool Congress, though, had claimed that it was backed by the Opposition BJP, which has already called for a  12-hour strike tomorrow to protest against the police action.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, a Trinamool spokesperson said "These are NOT Students... These are Hooligans of BJP... They wanted "Dead Bodies", they wanted to create a Anarchy like Bangladesh in Bengal".

"They pelted stones at police, broke barricades, destroyed police vehicles, set fire to motorcycles, multiple police badly injured, IC Chanditala head split wide open... This will NOT BE TOLERATED!" the post read.

The police had said yesterday that the protest was being held without proper permission. They also said they had intelligence inputs that it was being held to unleash chaos on the city's roads, taking advantage of the people's anger over the rape-murder of the young doctor at the city's RG Kar Medical College.

Overnight, the city had turned into a fortress, with over 6000 policemen on the roads peppered with barricades and drones in the sky.

The Trinamool has released two videos claiming they were the evidence of the plot to create unrest. In the videos, the authenticity of which NDTV has not verified, several men are heard saying, "we need bodies".

"The BJP leadership has been told that unless a Nandigram-type incident happens and there are dead bodies, the tide will not turn in BJP's favour," alleged Trinamool leader Jayprakash Majumdar.