Most shops remained shut in Aligarh in protest against police action on people agitating against the new citizenship matrix even as the authorities extended the ban on Internet services till Tuesday midnight as the city remained on edge.

Doctors said a young man who suffered a gunshot wound on Sunday was better and recovering, in what appeared to be the lone positive on an otherwise tense day.

A large number of people gathered at Purani Chungi near the Aligarh Muslim University campus on Monday afternoon and chanted slogans against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens despite the continuous use of force since Sunday evening to disperse them.

At Shah Jamal Idgah, the protest of women continued for the 27th day on Monday after the police allowed them to erect a shamiana, finally deferring to the persistence of the protesters.

This was after police and Rapid Action Force personnel had baton-charged the women on dharna at Shah Jamal and Kotwali police station at 3am — on the intervening night between Sunday and Monday — and removed the protesters.

A large number of women later gathered again at Shah Jamal Idgah.

A woman protester told reporters that the police told them they would be allowed to erect the shamiana near the Idgah if they wound up their protest outside the police station, less than half a kilometre away.

The women had marched to the police station on Saturday after the cops had removed a shamiana they had put up on Friday night to protect themselves from dust storms and rain.

“The police didn’t let us raise the shamiana and snatched it from us. The next morning (on Saturday), some of us marched to the nearby Kotwali police station and sat on dharna there,” a woman protester said, narrating how the trouble started on Sunday.

Government sources and local people said most shops in the city remained closed on Monday in protest against the police action.

On Sunday, the anti-CAA protests had turned into full-fledged clashes at several places in the city, including the Babri Mandi area between Shah Jamal and Kotwali, when some people suspected to be from Hindutva groups tried to prevent the women from taking out a procession.

“The police and the protesters have registered five cases against each other. We are keeping a close watch on social media, where some people are spreading false rumours,” Aligarh district magistrate Chandra Bhushan Singh said.

“The Internet service will remain suspended for 24 hours (till Tuesday),” Singh added.

The administration had on Sunday suspended Internet services in the city till midnight.

Eyewitnesses said while both sides had pelted stones at the other and occasionally fired at each other on Sunday evening, the police fired tear gas shells from the side of the supporters of the citizenship law.

“The police initially didn’t prevent us from taking out the procession but there were hundreds of people standing near different cross-roads and irritating us by raising pro-CAA slogans when we were chanting against it,” said a woman protester who asked not to be named.

“Many of them used abusive words against us. Some youths who were with us didn’t like this and that was how the clash started. Both sides threw stones at each other for about an hour. We also saw youths firing from their pistols before the police started firing tear gas from the opposite side.”

Mohammad Tariq, a 25-year-old city businessman who suffered a gunshot injury on Sunday during violence on a stretch that leads to Kotwali police station, is recovering at the District Government Hospital, doctors said.