SIT to probe anti-CAA violence in UP

The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has decided that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) will probe cases of violence during the recent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the state.

The Director-General of Police (DGP) O.P. Singh has ordered the SIT probe.

The DGP said that the SIT, in each district, will be headed by an officer of an Additional SP rank. The SIT will be headed by Additional SP (Crime) or Additional SP (City) of the district.

More than 1,100 people have been arrested and 5,558 kept in preventive detention following violence related to anti-CAA protests in the past one week.

The police has put the death toll in clashes across the state at 19.

The victims comprised five from Firozabad, four in Meerut, three in Kanpur, two each in Sambhal and Bijnor and one each in Muzaffarnagar, Rampur and Lucknow.

This tally does not include the eight-year-old boy who was killed in Varanasi in a stampede on December 20.

"The eight-year-old was not killed in police action but in a stampede when protesters were retreating," a senior police official said.

During raids at various places, the police recovered 35 illegal weapons which were used during the riots to fire at the police.

A police official said that 647 empty cartridges were also recovered from various places in the state.

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