The Kolkata International Book Fair turned into a battleground of sorts when students protesting against Citizenship Amendment Act clashed with BJP supporters during a confrontation over an alleged heckling of senior party leader Rahul Sinha who was visiting a party bookstall on Saturday evening.
Subsequently after the police intervened and detained some of the agitators a large number of them raided the Bidhannagar North Police Station and beat up men in uniform including women constable sources said, adding the anti-CAA protesters were questioning the reason behind what they called “selective arrests” made by the police.
One of the agitators said they were protesting outside a saffron bookstall where Sinha was visiting when “some BJP workers came out and attacked us. When we resisted the police indiscriminately lathi-charged us and arrested our friends. The BJP workers who had started the fight were allowed to go. The police did not even take our complaints.”
BJP workers who were present at the place said they had reacted only after the protesters started heckling the senior leader. “We had first ignored them but when they blocked him much the way they did Babul Supriyo at Jadavpur University we had no other way but to teach them a lesson that it was not JU but somewhere else.” Subsequently the inspector in-charge of the police station said the complaints of both the sides had been taken.