The protests against the Agnipath recruitment scheme intensified across the country and spread to the south on Friday, with mobs of young men burning trains and buses and attacking BJP leaders’ homes and a young man dying in alleged police firing.
Army aspirant Rakesh, 24, who died after the Railway Protection Force fired on protesters at Secunderabad station in Telangana, and an elderly passenger who died after a mob torched a train in Bihar’s Lakhisarai station were the two fatalities of the day’s tumult.
As reports of violence and even robbery by some people participating in the protests came in, political leaders appealed to the youths to learn from the recent farmers’ movement and demonstrate peacefully, denying the authorities any opportunity to malign the agitation or crack down on it.
Telangana police sources said the RPF had fired after a large mob “ran amok”, torching a few bogies of the Calcutta-bound East Coast Express, Ajanta Express and some local trains at Secunderabad station and stoning cops.
A PTI report said Rakesh was the youngest of four siblings from a farming family in Dabeerpet village, Warangal.
Smoke billows from a passenger coach in Secunderabad, Telangana. Sanjay Choudhary and Reuters
Village sarpanch Raju said the young man, an undergraduate student, had cleared the physical and medical tests for army selection and was protesting with others against the government decision to cancel the existing recruitment process in favour of the Agnipath scheme.
The Lakhisarai victim was a passenger of the Delhi-Bhagalpur Vikramshila Express that was set ablaze. A melee resulted as the passengers rushed to vacate the train. The victim, apparently in his 50s, managed to get off the train but collapsed on the platform. His identity and the cause of death remain unclear.
“Railway police took him to the district hospital, where he was declared dead. We have been unable to identify him or find his luggage. We have got some information that he was a resident of Akbarpur near Bhagalpur,” Lakhisarai district magistrate Sanjay Kumar Singh told The Telegraph.
The protests stretched from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand in the north to Telangana in the south; from Bihar, Bengal, Odisha and Assam in the east to Madhya Pradesh.
In the Bihar town of Bettiah, protesters vandalised the ancestral homes of deputy chief minister Renu Devi of the BJP and state unit president Sanjay Jaiswal. The leaders were not present and nobody was hurt.
The new BJP district offices in West Champaran, Rohtas and Madhepura were set on fire.
Fearing mob mobilisation and violence, the Haryana government suspended mobile Internet services across the state.
Under the Agnipath scheme, most ordinary soldiers recruited to the armed forces will serve only four years and retire without pension.
In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, where the Cantonment railway station was vandalised, a protester said: “Youths from poor families join the armed forces. The government wants us to serve four years and retire without pension. It wants to create a pool of jobless people in their 20s. This is unacceptable.”
Protesters set fire to the Jathhari police outpost and a police jeep in the Tappal area of Aligarh after, eyewitnesses claimed, the force fired rubber bullets at the mob and real bullets in the air. The police did not confirm firing.
A wagon of a stationary train was torched in Ballia, and a state transport bus set ablaze in Aligarh.
A mob stoned the camp office of Uttar Pradesh transport minister and Ballia MLA Daya Shankar Singh and damaged the hoarding at the office gate, his brother Dharmendra Singh said.
Violence was reported from Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Chandauli, Etah, Bulandshahr, Allahabad, Agra, Mathura, Firozabad, Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Haldwani in Uttarakhand.
The Agra-Delhi highway was blocked and the police stoned, officers said.
‘Bandh’ call
The Opposition Grand Alliance in Bihar has called for a “Bihar bandh” on Saturday in support of the agitation.
In Bihar, at least nine trains including long-distance express trains were torched at the railway stations in Samastipur, Dumraon, Lakhisarai, Ara, Danapur, Fathuha, Islampur and Supaul.
Several other railway stations witnessed vandalism. Around Rs 3 lakh was allegedly looted from the ticket counters at Bihiya, Bhojpur. Reports said mobs snatched mobile phones from some of the stranded and distraught passengers.
The flames reached Patna on the third day of the agitation, with Patna Junction vandalised and some arterial streets blockaded with burning tyres and bamboo sticks.
Hundreds gheraoed the army recruitment office in Cuttack, Odisha, prompting a police baton-charge. The protesters later blocked the Ring Road, the lifeline of Cuttack City.
“We have cleared the medical and physical tests for army recruitment and were waiting to take the written test on May 30, but it has been cancelled,” a youth said.
He demanded the Agnipath scheme be scrapped and the written test held immediately.
Trains
At least 12 trains have been torched and over 200 others affected since the protests erupted on Wednesday, the railways said.
Dozens of trains have been cancelled. The worst hit has been East Central Railway (ECR), which covers Bihar, Jharkhand and parts of Uttar Pradesh.
“Altogether 164 trains were cancelled, 64 were terminated before their destinations, while 10 had to start beyond their originating station. Another 12 trains were rerouted,” ECR chief PRO Rajesh Kumar said.
Hundreds of other trains were stranded at various stations in and around Bihar.
Additional reporting by Subhashish Mohanty from Bhubaneswar