Students, patients suffer as protesters squat on road

Kolkata: A handful of men held the city to ransom for more than three hours on Wednesday. Hundreds of students got stuck after their schools got over as a right-winged organization rallied from

Sealdah

to

Bangladesh High Commission

on Circus Avenue. They were protesting against the attack on people from the minority community in Bangladesh. The cascading impact threw traffic in central and parts of south Kolkata out of gear for hours.

After the protestors were stopped by police at

Moulali

around 11.30am, 600 men squatted on the road, throwing traffic out of gear. The agitators dispersed after much persuasion but by then the roads were left grid-locked. Police had a harrowing time managing the snarl. It took the cops almost an hour to untangle the traffic mess.

Lura Roy Sarkar

, a guardian of

St James School

student, got stuck for more than two hours on the hot and humid afternoon. Dr Joydeep Chowdhury had to cancel all his appointments after wasting two hours on AJC Bose Road. But the worst affected were students as the entire zone is dotted with schools - Calcutta Boys', Calcutta Girls', Sealdah Loreto, Our Lady

Queen

of the Mission, St James and Prat Memorial. The ripple effect was also felt by students of Birla High School, La Martinere and

Don Bosco

. Since the road leads to two major hospitals -

NRS Medical College

and Hospital and B R

Singh Hospital

- many patients had a tough time reaching the hospitals. Hundreds of passengers even missed trains from Sealdah station.