Eight persons have been taken into custody

The police on Thursday thwarted a sit-in against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Varanasi and took eight persons into custody.

A few protesters, mostly women, reached at Beniabagh Maidan in the afternoon, carrying national flags and banners against the CAA and a proposed pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC).

In a video footage of the incident, the police were seen forcibly taking women away. The protesters accused the police of misbehaviour. But the police said the protest was illegal and no permission was sought.

District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said that as 8-10 men and some women had gathered at the spot for the protest, the police were deployed. Some of them threw stones at the policemen when they tried to arrest the women. The men were arrested, Mr. Sharma said. “They [the rest] are being identified through photographs and will be arrested,” Mr. Sharma said.

Mr. Sharma said a place had been designated for staging protests, and the Congress and the CPI(M) were recently allowed to conduct their programmes there as per law.

Security forces will be deployed at three places in the city, which the administration says could turn into protest sites.

“We will book them under the National Security Act if they disrupt the peace, because in Varanasi all dharmagurus have appealed to the people not to take to the streets and get into any unconstitutional acts,” Mr. Sharma said.