Poet Munawwar Rana's daughters booked for protesting against CAA, NRC

Fauzia and Sumaiya, daughters of Urdu poet Munawwar Rana are among the women booked by police for defying prohibitory orders and protesting against the CAA and NRC in Uttar Pradesh. The district administration has booked 160 women altogether.

Lucknow: Daughters of renowned Urdu poet Munawwar Rana are among the 160 women booked by police for allegedly defying prohibitory orders and taking part in the protests against the CAA and NRC here, officials said.

The protests at the historic Clock Tower in the old Lucknow area against Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) started on Friday and have continued with hundreds of women braving the chill to take part in it.

The district administration has booked 160 women, including two daughters of Rana, for defying the orders on Monday night.

"Prohibitory orders are in force. Yet women have been staging protests. This amounts to defying the orders and three cases have been lodged at the Thakurganj police station in this connection," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Zone) Vikas Chand Tripathi said.

Fauzia and Sumaiya, daughters of Rana, have been named in one of the FIRs, he said.

Besides the Clock Tower, where protests have been going on for the past five days on the lines of Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, another protest by women was staged in Ujariaon area of Gomti Nagar on Monday evening against the CAA and the NRC.

Over a dozen women staged a sit-in near a 'dargah', holding placards showing anti-CAA, NRC slogans. When asked to vacate the area, they resorted to sloganeering against the citizenship law, police said.

A police team which rushed to the spot urged the women to go home citing prohibitory orders but they did not relent, police said.

Jaibunisa, a protester said, "The intention of the government is not correct as far as the CAA and the NRC are concerned. India is the largest democracy in the world but the current government is ignoring a section of its population. What is saddening is the fact that it is not even listening to the pleas."

Another protester, Nazia Sheikh, said, "What is the reason that the Centre does not want to soften its stand. Muslims have sacrificed the most in the country's freedom struggle. Why does the government want to push them into the dark?"

Meanwhile, Urdu poet Munnawar Rana on Tuesday argued that a rally addressed here by Union Home Minister Amit Shah violated the prohibitory orders, just as his daughters are accused of doing.

On Tuesday, Shah held a public meeting in another part of the city in support of the CAA.

"The Union home minister's rally had all the required permissions," Lucknow's District Magistrate Abhishek Prakash said.