BENGALURU: SIX students were injured after police resorted to lathicharge to prevent the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members from entering Amnesty International’s office in Indiranagar in the city on Friday morning.
A senior police officer said some of the protesters were carrying petrol in bottles and tried to barge into the Amnesty office. The policemen stopped them and warned them to protest peacefully. But four of the protesters came near the gate carrying petrol bottles. So, the policemen pushed them back.
“We suspect that they were planning to use them like petrol bombs. We had no option but to resort to lathicharge to stop them. Some members even tried to physically assault a DCP,” said a senior police officers.
In the lathicharge, six students, including two girls, were injured. One student was injured on the head and three fell unconscious and the police shifted them to the hospital immediately.
The injured students are Manjunath Reddy, Veena, Somashekar, Ashwath and Prithvi.
However, ABVP members claimed that they wanted to protest peacefully, but police resorted to lathicharge to disperse them when more students gathered at the spot. Twenty-one students have been arrested, they claimed. The protesters were demanding action against Amnesty International India, which had organised a Kashmir-related event a week back were some people allegedly shouted anti-national and anti-army slogans.