I was assaulted at Shaheen Bagh CAA protest: journalist Deepak Chaurasia

Deepak Chaurasia, consulting editor at News Nation TV channel, on posted a video on Twitter that shows him being shoved.

TV journalist Deepak Chaurasia has alleged that he was assaulted when he was reporting at Shaheen Bagh, the place in Delhi where protesters against the new citizenship have been camping for more than a month.

Chaurasia, consulting editor at News Nation TV channel, on Friday night posted a video on Twitter that shows him saying he will speak to protesters about their “pain" against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) when he is apparently shoved and someone tries to snatch his mike. 

The video also shows a group of men trying to snatch a camera from Chaurasia’s video journalist. 

Police have filed a case under laws relating to "voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery" and "common intension" against unknown persons at the Shaheen Bagh police station, a said senior police officer.

CAA aims to fast-track citizenship for persecuted Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who arrived in India before December 31, 2014, from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The passing of the bill on December 11 last year triggered widespread demonstrations. 

The NRC was first carried out in Assam to identify illegal immigrants, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s election manifesto in 2019 promised to implement in a phased manner nationwide.

If a nationwide NRC is enacted, activists and opposition politicians expect that residents unable to prove citizenship would be taken to detention centres, as is happening in Assam.