Patna, Bhopal: Bihar boiled over the Agnipath job scheme on Thursday when 15 districts saw massive protests and vandalism. A law-maker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Aruna Devi had a close shave when a large number of protesters attacked her. The incident occurred when she was passing through a railway crossing at Nawada in Bihar. The legislator was going to take part in an event and, just as her vehicle reached the railway crossing, a group of protesters pelted stones at her vehicle. She remained unscathed, but her driver sustained minor injuries.
The agitators also attacked the BJP’s Nawada office and damaged properties there and set the party office on fire that turned more than 300 chairs and documents into ashes. The agitators torched three coaches of a passenger train at Sidhwalia railway station.
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In Chhapra, they attacked as many as 12 trains and set three of them alight and, in Kaimur, they lit the Inter-city Express train. The agitators said they would continue to protest unless the government withdraws the scheme.
In Gwalior district of Madhya Pradesh, a group of protesters went on the rampage and the police resorted to lathi-charge on them. The agitators damaged public properties at Birla Nagar railway station in Gwalior, the police said.
They broke the windows of some trains, burnt tyres and raised slogans against the Central Government. The agitation affected the movements of various trains in North Central Railway’s Jhansi division.
The angry youths also halted nearly seven trains by keeping wooden logs, tree branches and railway properties on tracks, besides they threw stones at the buses, sources said. The incidents of violence were also reported from the Gole Ka Mandir area in Gwalior. Several videos of violent protests went viral on social media. The police resorted to lathi-charge on the protesters and detained a large number of them.
