Lucknow’s Clock Tower women ‘pause’ 65-day anti-CAA protest

LUCKNOW:A day after defying Sunday’s nationwide ‘janata curfew’, women anti-CAA protesters at Lucknow’s Hussainabad Clock Tower ‘paused’ their 65-day-old protest on Monday and left the place in police protection.

However, the women have tied their stoles at the protest site as a symbolic protest against CAA and NRC.

Earlier, the Lucknow police had continuously been persuading them to call off their protest, especially after the coronavirus outbreak, but to no avail.

Poet Munnawar Rana’s daughter Sumaiyya Rana, against whom there are several FIRs for violation of prohibitory orders and ‘misbehavior’ with police personnel during the protest, said, “We are not ending this protest completely. CAA and NRC is an internal matter of the country, while the outbreak is worldwide. We are contributing towards the fight against corona as it was difficult to maintain social distancing at the protest site.”

On Sunday night police distributed sanitisers among the women, besides appealing to them to end the protest. “We had been appealing to them to call off the protest since the beginning of the stir, as it was in violation of law. After the coronavirus outbreak, we were in talks with them,” said additional DCP, Lucknow west, VC Tripathi. Soon after the protesters left, the site was cleaned by the authorities. However, the dais used by the protesters is still there.

MANY ARRESTED

The protest began on January 17. Since then, over a dozen FIRs have been registered against protesters, including some identified and some unidentified persons. “Several people have been booked and arrested for violation of prohibitory orders and misbehaving with police.,” said Tripathi. HTC