A tense standoff between police and a crowd of protesting students has unfolded at the University of Madras campus in the city of Chennai, India. Calls for dispersal were met with demands to release the detained students first.

Law enforcement entered the grounds of the Madras University late on Tuesday in an attempt to evict some 60 students who were staging a sit-in protest there. The students were promptly surrounded by around 100 police officers, yet they refused to disperse.

Check out the courage of these students! Fight against #CAA. The protest is absolutely peaceful yet the police surround with lathis and busses pic.twitter.com/1ks9GjTPqL — Gayatri Khandhadai (@gayatrikl) 17 декабря 2019 г.

The students reportedly demanded the release of two fellow protesters, who'd been detained by the police a day earlier. The law enforcement officers, for their part, urged the students to leave the campus first, promising to then release the detainees.

A tense standoff ensued, with fears it could turn violent. The university had previously declared a December 18-23 leave in a bid to prevent the protesters from gathering on its grounds. So far, law enforcement has refrained from forcefully evicting the peaceful protesters.

The ongoing unrest in India was triggered by the law that facilitates citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who'd fled to India before 2015 due to religious persecution. While designed to protect the vulnerable groups, the law’s critics claimed it was discriminatory against Muslims, and the bill’s formal adoption then triggered a wave of outrage and mass protests.

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The students’ dissent was further fueled by a police raid on New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University’s campus, which occurred over the weekend. Responding to riots outside of the university and to stone-throwing protesters, police on Sunday broke into its grounds, deployed tear gas and chased down students and staff. Chaotic footage from the scene has been widely shared, and caused a follow-up mass protest outside police HQ. The students detained on the campus were eventually released.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that the Muslim outrage was uncalled for, lamenting in a series of tweets on Monday that the protests against the citizenship law were, to his eyes, “unfortunate and deeply distressing.” He added that the disturbance and damage to property wouldn’t be tolerated.

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