The city administration on Saturday allowed a group of protesters to violate Section 144, in contrast to the police crackdown against the anti-citizenship-act demonstrators.

Except that this crowd of 100-odd was condemning not the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or the National Register of Citizens but “American terrorism”.

Members of Lucknow’s Shia community gathered in front of the Imambara to slam the US a day after a drone strike killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad airport

Spearheading the protest was Shia leader Kalbe Jawad Naqvi, who is considered close to the Yogi Adityanath government and whose followers had stayed away from the citizenship protests.

Section 144, which bans gatherings of more than four, has been in force since December 18 across Lucknow City and many other parts of Uttar Pradesh.

On December 19, the police had thrashed citizenship protesters for violating Section 144, and for what the force claimed was vandalism and violence. Many protesters were arrested and put in jail.

An administrative official in Lucknow said: “We were not informed in writing about (Saturday’s) gathering but got to know about it from our sources. The community had promised that the assembly would be peaceful and would disperse within two hours.”

Jawad had recently met Adityanath and later issued a statement saying the citizenship protests should be peaceful and no violence should be allowed. He is yet to condemn the police excesses against the protesters.

Addressing Saturday’s gathering, Jawad said: “The day will come soon when America, Saudi Arabia, Israel and their slave countries will drown in the blood of these martyrs.”

He said Soleimani had always been against terrorism and stood with the righteous people.

“America is a terrorist country,” he said. “What was his crime that America killed him?”