Man opens fire at anti-CAA protest in New Delhi, injures one

NEW DELHI:  A gunman went live on Facebook Thursday, saying that he was undertaking his "final journey" before he shot at a crowd of protesters who had gathered to show their dissent against India's new citizenship law. 

The shooter, dressed in a black jacket, brandished a single-barrel weapon as he stood meters away from dozens of policemen outside Jamia Millia Islamia University, where more than 1,000 protesters had gathered for a march.

He shouted slogans against protesters before firing at them. This is the first incident of its kind ever since the protest begun throughout the country against the controversial law. 

“He was in front of all the people - protesters and policemen who were standing nearby, but he jumped in from the side, brandished the gun and said ‘Come I will give you freedom’,” a witness named Aamer said. 

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The Citizenship Amendment Act fast-tracks Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from three neighboring countries.

Thursday’s shooting raised concerns from the opposition about the youth trying to take the law in their own hands to crush any dissent against the government.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has rejected the protests and members of his Hindu nationalist party and its affiliates have painted protesters as anti-nationals.

This week, India’s junior finance minister Anurag Thakur encouraged supporters at a state election rally in New Delhi to chant slogans calling for traitors to be shot. The move drew a reprimand from the country's election commission.

Minutes before firing, the shooter, who identified himself as “Rambhakt Gopal” uploaded posts onto his Facebook profile saying this will be his “final journey” and urged readers to “remember his family”.

The video showed him walking through a road near Jamia, where the students were gathered.

The shooter also posted photos of himself, on Facebook, posing with a gun and wearing a saffron T-shirt, the color of Hindu nationalists.

Police later said they had detained the suspected gunman but gave no details. They said one student was injured in his hand.

Congress party said the shooting showed comments by leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could stoke violence.

“Is this what BJP leaders ... intended? Creating an armed militia of radicalised youth,” the party said in a tweet.

Modi’s government says the citizenship law is needed to help members of persecuted religious minorities who fled to India before 2015 from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

But protesters say the law, and a proposed national register for citizens, discriminates against Muslims and violates India’s secular constitution.

Some of the biggest protests have taken place near Jamia university, which police stormed in December last year. On Thursday, police barricaded the road outside the university.

A group of students, most of them women, were holding a sit-in near the barricade after they were stopped from marching to a memorial for independence leader Mahatma Gandhi on the anniversary of his assassination in 1948.