Citizenship (Amendment) Act stir: Senior Howrah cop attacked during raid on vandals

HOWRAH: A senior Howrah cop was injured after a police team, which visited Sankrail to flush out arsonists wanted for last weekend’s violent protests, was attacked with bombs, bricks and bamboo poles on Tuesday evening.
Howrah City Police deputy commissioner (headquarters) Ajit Singh Yadav, who sustained splinter wounds on his feet and took brickbats on his forehead, chest and hands, and six of his colleagues were kept “under observation” at a Howrah hospital on Tuesday evening.The injuries were not life-threatening, senior Howrah officials said.
The police team went on a raid to Tepati, on the fringes of Howrah’s Sankrail (about 25km west of Kolkata on the other side of the Hooghly), on Tuesday evening in search of those responsible for Saturday’s violence at Sankrail railway station. The anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act agitators had set ablaze the station’s ticket counter and signal room.
Yadav and his colleagues entered Tepati around 5.30pm but were confronted by a large mob, which first hurled bricks and then bombs. One of the bombs landed near Yadav and other cops and, as he fell on the ground, he was attacked with bricks and then bamboo poles.
Six other policemen, including Sankrail inspector-in-charge Madhusudan Mukherjee, were injured, some of them sustaining splinter wounds. The mob then targeted a police vehicle and surrounded the entire police force with Yadav still on the road.
Trinamool leaders reached the spot a little later; One of them, Masud Alam Khan, addressed the mob on a microphone and asked it to calm down. They then helped clear the road the police force had taken to reach the spot. “Our colleagues then lifted Yadav and two other police officers, who sustained splinter wounds, to Naayana Supercpeciality Hospital on Andul Road,” Mukherjee said. Police later arrested five persons for Tuesday’s violence.
Yadav, his colleagues said, was bleeding when he reached the hospital’s emergency unit. Doctors, who managed to stop the bleeding, said he also sustained facial trauma injury. “Tests, including CT scans, are being conducted to assess the extent of injury. He has been kept under observation,” a senior police officer said.