40 BRTS & 55 AMTS buses were vandalised by Cong workers during the strike.
Congress leaders and workers, along with members of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), staged demonstrations across the city on Friday in order to make the bandh a success.
According to the police, around 390 Congress leaders and workers were detained and eight of them arrested on charges of damaging public property.
Though the police, along with the State Reserve Police and Rapid Action Force personnel, were deployed in large numbers, party workers succeeded in disrupting normal life in the city.
Since early Friday morning, reports of sporadic demonstrations across the city started pouring in. According to the police, Congressmen targeted two BRTS and around 40 AMTS buses in Khanpur, Bapunagar, Khamasa, Ashram Road, Maninagar, Amraiwadi and Naroda. Protesters either punctured the tyres of buses or smashed the windowpanes with stones. At Vasana and Amraiwadi, demonstrators stopped two buses, snatched the keys from the drivers and fled.
Around 9:30 am, some bikers stopped a BRTS bus near CTM crossroads and threw stones, breaking windowpanes. According to officials, a similar incident was also reported from the Jasodanagar crossroads, Vasna, Bapunagar, Kalapinagar, Hatkeshwar, Gomtipur, Mirzapur and Memco, where AMTS buses were attacked with passengers inside.
The police, however, claimed that immediate action prevented any major casualty or injury. “Karanj police arrested six protesters from the AMTS depot at Lal Darwaza for damaging some buses. However, neither anything major happened nor was anyone injured in the protests. Overall, the situation was under control,” said Sanjay Shrivastav, joint commissioner of police, headquarters.
Protesters targeted trains, too. In the morning, around 15 protesters, including Youth Congress leader Ashish Shah, reached Vastrapur station and tried to stop a train. However, police arrived in no time and detained all of them. Following the incident, a majority of the shops in the area downed shutters till afternoon to avoid any untoward incident.
A mob of more than 20 party workers, meanwhile, reached Shyamal crossroads and allegedly tried to force shopkeepers to down shutters and engaged in pelting stones at buses. To avoid any confrontation or damage, some of the shopkeepers even downed shutters, while others were engaged in an altercation with the demonstrators. Immediately, Satellite police rushed to the spot, detained 27 agitators and also resorted to a lathicharge to bring the situation under control.
The police again lathicharged a mob that had gheraoed a deputy commissioner of police at Hatkeshwar, injuring one person in the process. Many other parts of the city also witnessed violent protests during the day.
Though cops were deployed at almost every part of the city, Congress and NSUI workers somehow managed to burn the effigies of chief minister Narendra Modi in sensitive parts of the city, including Juhapura, Shahpur and Kalupur. At Juhapura, corporator of Sarkhej, Haji Mirza Shaikh, along with some Congress workers, burnt Modi’s effigy on the road.
At Kalupur, another senior Congress corporator, Surendra Bakshi, along with 50 of his supporters, were detained when they came out on Relief Road to close shops forcibly. According to the police, some protesters even targeted three ATMs by breaking the glass doors in a bid to shut the shops in that area.
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