The law that raged India protests is fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslims from three neighboring countries, which is essentially an anti-muslim law. Critics say it is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalize the 200-million-strong Islamic minority, AFP reported.

Modi on Monday denied this, tweeting that the new law “does not affect any citizen of India of any religion,” while accusing “vested interest groups” of stoking the “deeply distressing” unrest.

Rahul Gandhi, former opposition Congress chief, tweeted that the law and a mooted nationwide register of citizens also seen as anti-Muslim were “weapons of mass polarization unleashed by fascists.”

The UN human rights office said last week it was concerned the law “would appear to undermine the commitment to equality before the law enshrined in India’s Constitution,” while Washington and the European Union have also expressed unease.

On Monday fresh protests took place including in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Lucknow, where hundreds of students – most of them Muslims, television pictures indicated – tried to storm a police station, hurling volleys of stones at officers cowering behind a wall.

The northeast, where even allowing non-Muslims citizenship is opposed by many locals and which in recent days has been the epicenter of protests with six people dead, also saw fresh demonstrations.

In the east in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, thousands took part in a march led by state premier, Mamata Banerjee, a firebrand opponent of Modi. Protestors set fire to tires on train lines.