By IANS,
Nagpur : A truck driver died in stone pelting here during the Bharatiya Janata Party-Vishwa Hindu Parishad (BJP-VHP) sponsored nationwide agitation Thursday against revocation of allotment land to the Amarnath shrine in Jammu and Kashmir.
While dozens of state transport buses were damaged in various localities during the shutdown, and some people suffered minor injuries in the sporadic incidents, the truck driver’s death was the only fatality of the day-long agitation here, Joint Police Commissioner B.G. Kangale said.
“A stone shattered the glass windowpane of the driver’s cabin and landed inside but, curiously, no injury mark was seen anywhere on the body of Sojar Pawar, the truck driver,” police inspector K A. Swamy told IANS.
“Pawar perhaps died of shock,” the official added.
“As many as 270 protesters, including 10 women, were arrested for different offences during the agitation which was marked by the stone pelting incidents,” Kangale said.
Ten buses were damaged by a group of activists in the city’s Mahal area Wednesday night, he added.
Claiming 100 percent success for the agitation, BJP city unit general secretary Sanjay Bhende told IANS that all schools and colleges remained closed in response to the shutdown call and business establishments in all city markets were shuttered.
The shutdown call received mixed response in other parts of Vidarbha with no major incident. However, stone-pelting and damage to buses was reported from some of the region’s eleven districts.