The shooting outside Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi on Thursday by a minor shook the country. On Friday, two men, threatened student protesters in Bengaluru, that there would be a repeat of Jamia in Bengaluru.
The High Grounds Police, who were deployed for security at the Maurya Circle, where a protest was under way, detained the two men and herded them off to the police station after complaints from protesters.
The students of several colleges in Bengaluru had gathered at Maurya Circle at around 7.30 pm to protest the incident at Jamia Millia. The students demanded that Union Home Minister Amit Shah resign and that BJP MP Anurag Thakur be booked for hate speech.
By 11 pm, many protesters had dispersed after which the two men who were passing by began heckling the remaining student protesters, Times of India reported.
TOI quoted a student named Adrian stating that the small group of protesters stayed within the barricaded area and two men, who were inside the barricade, began shouting pro-CAA slogans.
Speaking to TNM, Teresa Braggs, a student protester said that three men were circling the area where the protest took place for over an hour before the incident occurred. “They began saying, ‘it’s not down down CAA but you people will go down just like Jamia’. Two of them came up to a friend and took a picture with my friend. The two men shook hands with the same friend and started running,” Teresa said.
The two men began running away from the protest site and Teresa and her friends chased them. “The police was also with us. We caught up to them and the police detained the two men,” she says.
According to the TOI report, the two men came back and pleaded with the protesters to not file any police complaint. They were taken to the High Grounds Police Station, where the incident was noted in the case diary and the they were let off.
“We noted it as public nuisance. They were both bank employees and were drunk. One of them had thrown a party last night and they were all drunk when the incident happened. They apologised to the students. We told the students that we would register a case if they filed a complaint. But they accepted the apology. Se warned them and let the two men go,” the High Grounds Police said.