02, Jan 2016

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Jan 2, 2016, DHNS:
The New Year cheer made way for hostility on a street in Kozhikode on Friday morning, as activists of Hanuman Sena clashed with organisers of “Kiss Street”, an anti-moral policing protest, ahead of the event.
The police have arrested 32 people in connection with the clashes.
Members of Njattuvela, a cultural collective which leads the Kiss Street movement, were intercepted by the Hanuman Sena workers at the venue near the public library, around 9 am. Altercations triggered physical assaults as members of both the groups engaged in a street scuffle with wooden poles. Even as policemen stationed near the venue intervened, more people joined in the clashes. “We’ve arrested 16 people each from both the sides, including women who had come to participate in the event,” an official at the town police station told Deccan Herald. The organisers were scheduled to mark and occupy a street with kissing couples, plays, music and art as forms of protest against moral policing, regressive social systems and upper-caste fascism. Members of Njattuvela were involved in a symbolic mangalsutra-burning event organised in Kochi, in May last year.