Police entered Jamia Millia Islamia campus and used force to evict students after protesters of the new Citizenship Amendment Bill turned violent and torched four public transport buses and damaged several others. Over 100 students and 35 police personnel were injured in the clashes.
The act was given a thumbs down by many including some Bollywood personalities who felt it was “barbaric and inhuman” and against the constitutional right of expression.
Celebrities from Bollywood including actress Parineeti Chopra, Huma Qureshi, noted filmmakers like Mahesh Bhatt and Anubhav Sinha have condemned the police crackdown and accused the government of trying to stifle voices of dissent.
Huma Qureshi felt the government has created a law against its own people, “following the Nazi Germany model”.
One of her Pinned tweets also questions Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah over why such actions were taken when students have the right to protest peacefully.
Mahesh Bhatt said, the law is “extremely weak and an impotent tool”.
Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha said, students were not angry at one thing, but many.
Actress Parineeti Chopra, cousin sister of Global star Priyanka Chopra, said “beating up innocent human beings for speaking their mind? BARBARIC”.
Renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta retweeted a tweet shared by entrepreneur Sanjoy K Roy that states, “we live in the age of denial”.
Filmmaker Alankrita Shrivastava said nothing can justify what has happened to the students, “…the barbaric beating up of the innocent, the vandalizing of a space of learning, the invasion of the students' hostel. History will remember”.
Earlier, celebrities like Anurag Kashyap, Taapsee Pannu, Konkona Sensharma and Sudhir Mishra also had condemned police highhandedness at Jamia Millia Islamia.
The amended Citizenship Act grants Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and Parsis who have faced persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and migrated to India before 2015.
The Law, however, contentiously does not grant citizenship to Muslims arriving from these three neighbouring countries – something which protesters believe violates the Indian Constitution