Police firing kills protester against Indian nuclear plant

Police fired on demonstrators near Ratnagiri, Maharashtra — the proposed site of the 9,900 MW Jaitapur nuclear power project — killing one person, reports the BBC. 

On Tuesday, the Shiv Sena, an aggressive regional political party that has (for largely cynical political reasons) been active in the protests, called for a shutdown of all business activity to protest the police action, according to India's Economic Times newspaper.

Some Sena activists threw stones, smashed bus windows and blocked the Ratnagiri-Kolhapur highway with burning tires, the newspaper quoted police as sayin. In some places, they also deflated the tires of buses and trucks that were attempting to continue on their normal routes.

According to the BBC, the police firing was prompted when protests grew violent, destroying property.

Madhukar Gaikwad, an official from the Ratnagiri district, told the news channel that about 700 to 800 fisherman and villagers surrounded a local police station in the village of Nate and started to vandalise it.

"The mob burnt down the records room, destroyed computers and a TV set and put a police van on fire," the BBC quoted him as saying. "We tried to disperse them by using tear-gas and cane-charge. We used plastic bullets as well, but nothing worked. Finally, we used live ammunition in which one person was injured who died on his way to the hospital." 

Read GlobalPost's report on the opposition to the Jaitapur project in the Shiva Rules — our yearlong reporting project on India.