Protests against the Centre's Agnipath scheme continued as scores of youngsters descended on the Yamuna Expressway and blocked traffic movement briefly, prompting Gautam Buddh Nagar police to lodge an FIR against 225 protesters and arrest 15. Eight police personnel and a driver of a privately-run bus suffered injuries in violence during the protest in Jewar area of the district, adjoining Delhi in western Uttar Pradesh. The movement through Jewar toll plaza between Greater Noida and Mathura-Agra was blocked for around an hour from 12 noon, they said. "Police personnel in large numbers were rushed to the protest site in view of the law and order situation," a police official said, according to news agency PTI.
Movement was briefly disrupted at the Jewar toll plaza due to the protests and several vehicles were diverted from Pari Chowk. Police Commissioner Alok Singh said in a statement that no highway in Noida or Greater Noida was closed due to the protests and vehicular movement was normal across Gautam Buddh Nagar.
A man was shot dead in police firing in Telangana's Secunderabad, trains went up in flames, and public and private vehicles attacked, as railway stations and highways turned into battleground in many states on Friday amid burgeoning protests against Agnipath, the contentious defence recruitment scheme. The 24 year-old Rakesh, an Army aspirant from Dabeerpet village in Warangal district, is the first to person to have died in the violent protests which have swept across the country since Wednesday.
Assurances by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah and the Army chief failed to cut ice with hordes of angry youth, carrying bamboo sticks and stones, storming railway premises across cities and small towns and laying siege to highways, creating a security scare. The Railways cancelled 234 trains while 340 trains have been affected due to the protests.
Coaches of seven trains have so far been set ablaze by protesters, officials said, adding carriages of three running trains in the East Central Railway (ECR), headquartered in Bihar's Hajipur, and one empty rake in Kulharia, also in the same zone, were damaged by protestors. One coach of a train was also damaged in the washing line at Uttar Pradesh's Ballia. So far, 64 trains were short terminated in ECR. As the depredations against the recruitment scheme continued for the third day across large parts of India, from Uttar Pradesh to Telangana and Bihar to Madhya Pradesh, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Army chief Gen Manoj Pande tried to assuage the concerns of the agitators with little success.
-Inputs from PTI
