Anis death protests bring central Kolkata to its knees for 3 hours – Times of India

The city erupted in wide-spread protests on Tuesday as Left-backed students and Aliah University students on the Park Circus campus protested against the death of Anis Khan.

KOLKATA: The city erupted in wide-spread protests on Tuesday as Left-backed students and Aliah University students on the Park Circus campus protested against the death of Anis Khan.
Central Kolkata came to a standstill with the blockade leaving hundreds of home-bound commuters stranded for hours in the Central Business District. Students, who have just started going to schools after two years, also faced commute difficulties.
Police said that 58 protesters were detained and later released on bail.
Large parts of central and south Kolkata – lying between Park Circus-Moulali, SN Banerjee Road and College Street – were virtually shut for close to three hours and traffic on the entire stretch severely affected after clashes broke out between police personnel and students of the university in the College Street area on Tuesday evening.
Students and other protesters participated in a march and made a human chain at the Park Circus seven-point crossing before resuming the rally in the direction of Writers’ Building in Dalhousie area. They crossed Mullickbazar and then reached Moulali. This left traffic crippled. Hours after they left for Writers’ Building, the five point crossing seemed to fight the cascading impact.
School students were seen stranded at different parts of the city. At College Street, where a number of premier educational institutes are located, students were found waiting for buses for more than an hour. Many parents could not reach school to pick up their wards. There were frantic calls to students and schools so that the institutions kept the younger students inside till their parents reached.
Other parts of central Kolkata bore the brunt as they later changed the route when they realized they were being blocked on their entrance at SN Banerjee Road and moved towards College Street, instead. However, the police had put up barricades by then at the College Street-MG Road Crossing to stop the students.
By 3.30 pm, five IPS officers and a huge force – armed with helmets, water cannons and having a number of women police personnel – had taken up position at the spot. As the students first waited before trying to break the barricades, police cracked down and detained many male and female protesters in order to disperse others. The operation that was launched around 4.10 pm was over in the next 10 minutes. Police said some of the activists were detained. Several of them were seen being literally lifted by cops from four sides and taken to the waiting prison vans. All those detained were taken to Lalbazar central lock-up.
Police said SN Banerjee Road – connecting Moulali with Esplanade – was shut between 2 pm and 3.15 pm. MG Road was shut between 3.15 pm and 4.30 pm and CIT Road saw diversions from as early as 1.30 pm. There was some movement in between before another disruption post 1.50 pm. It was not before 5 pm that cops could bring some normalcy across central Kolkata. Howrah (from Beliaghata), Sealdah (from the south) and Esplanade (from the north) saw disruptions between 1.30 pm and 4.30 pm.