The protest in progress outside the Madras IIT.
The student protest outside the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, turned violent this morning as protesters clashed with the police.
Around 100 protesters have been detained, sources said. Some members of a local students' group, the RYSF, were allegedly roughed up by the police. The media was not allowed inside the IIT Madras campus.
Later, the authorities of the institution called the students' group for talks, sources said.
Protests have been on since last week, when the institute temporarily derecognised the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle - a group of around 20 students -- for allegedly violating its guidelines.
As the matter became politicised -- with DMK and VCK stepping in and the Congress blaming Union minister for human resources Smriti Irani for the ban -- the protest spilled over to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.
The IIT-Bombay formed its own study circle to show solidarity with the Ambedkar Periyar Group and students' groups from other university held protests in Mumbai.
The IIT Delhi, too, formed its own Ambedkar Periyar group, and IIT Kanpur created a Facebook page to register its protest. In Kolkata, Jadavpur University created a Facebook page in support of the student body.
The institute claims the group had been using the IIT name without permission. But students claim they've been targeted for criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Centre's policies.
Denying they had used the name of IIT or had links to banned organisations, the members of APSC demanded that the ban on them be revoked.