KOLKATA: India deployed troops on Saturday to quell deadly protests that have erupted in the state of West Bengal over legislation to change how Muslim-owned properties are managed.<\/p>\n
Police fired tear gas at the thousands of demonstrators who gathered on Friday in the state\u2019s Murshidabad district. Three people, including a child, were killed, police said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo far, 118 people have been arrested in connection with the violence,\u201d said Jawed Shamim, a senior police official in the state, adding that at least 15 police officers were injured.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s high court ordered federal troops to deploy. The Waqf amendment bill that set off the protests was passed earlier this month after heated debate.<\/p>\n
According to the ruling Hindu nationalist government, it will boost transparency around land management by holding accountable powerful Waqf boards, which control properties gifted by Muslim charitable endowments.<\/p>\n
But the opposition has called the bill a polarising \u201cattack\u201d on India\u2019s Muslim minority. They accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to win favour with its right-wing Hindu base.<\/p>\n
After the bill\u2019s passage, Modi called it a \u201cwatershed moment\u201d. Opposition Congress Party chief Rahul Gandhi meanwhile said the bill was \u201caimed at Muslims today but sets a precedent to target other communities in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n
Modi\u2019s decade as premier has seen him cultivate an image as an aggressive champion of the country\u2019s majority Hindu faith.<\/p>\n
His government revoked the constitutional autonomy of India\u2019s Muslim-majority region Kashmir, and backed the construction of a temple on grounds where a mosque stood for centuries before it was torn down by Hindu zealots in 1992.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KOLKATA: India deployed troops on Saturday to quell deadly protests that have erupted in the state of West Bengal over legislation to change how Muslim-owned properties are managed. Police fired tear gas at the thousands of demonstrators who gathered on Friday in the state\u2019s Murshidabad district. Three people, including a child, were killed, police said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-and-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8083,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions\/8083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}