NEW DELHI, March 3: Army units fanned out across the communally sensitive regions of India’s western state of Gujarat on Sunday, where the death toll after four days of religious violence was believed to have crossed 500, official sources said.
The state administration said it had ordered cable operators in Gujarat to blackout PTV and threatened to blackout Indian satellite channels if they showed provocative pictures. The government had briefly put a ban on Star News on Saturday for defying its orders.
In the volatile town of Godhra, police said they had arrested a local municipal councillor for his alleged involvement in a fierce attack on a train on Wednesday by suspected Muslim extremists in which 58 people including rightwing Hindu activists were killed.
“PTV has been banned from today (Sunday) and it will remain banned until the situation improves,” Gujarat Home Minister Gordhanbhai Zadafia said.
Accusing the PTV reportage of fanning the communal flames in Gujarat, Zadafia said: “Sometimes authorities have to take certain actions in the interests of society at large. Such telecasts have spread violence.”
Earlier on Sunday, Chief Minister Narendra Modi had warned that if any satellite television channel telecast programmes which were “not in the interest of communal harmony, they would be banned.”
Even in the remote areas of central Gujarat, tension was running high and villages were being attacked by mobs.
On Sunday, police put the death toll at 485. An official said a further 73 people had been killed in police firing.
“Most parts of Gujarat are now very quiet,” he said, adding that the rise in the death toll since Saturday was the result of a more comprehensive body count, rather than fresh violence.
Three people of a minority group were torched to death by a mob at the Maninagar railway station, the police said.
Two other people were stabbed to death in an industrial area on the outskirts of the city.
Curfew imposed at 47 places remained in force on the third day on Sunday as violence spread to even rural areas in south, north and central Gujarat.
In Deodhar village in Banaskantha district, six persons died in overnight violence. Two succumbed to police firing while four others died in mob violence, the police said in Ahmedabad quoting a delayed report. At least 30 people died in police firing during the last three days in Ahmedabad, the police said.
In another incident, over 10 trucks were torched by a violent mob in Aslali village.
The Press Trust of India said police fired on a mob which set afire huts and vehicles on Sunday and a press photographer escaped an attempt on his life as rioters defying curfew indulged in sporadic violence in curfew-bound Pandesara, Limbayat, Rander and Raghunathpura areas of Surat.
Police firing on the mob at Pandasara industrial area left two injured, police sources said.
The mob set fire to autorickshaws in Sagarmpura and set some huts afire in sensitive Limbayat police station area this evening, police and fire brigade sources said.
Police lobbed tear-gas shells in other sensitive localities of Vadifalia and Kadarsha-ni-nal when mob pelted stones at them.
Several photographers and scribes also faced the ire of the mob when they tried to take pictures of violence. A photographer of local daily Sandesh Raju Chinawala escaped an attempt on his life when some people tried to set him afire by sprinkling kerosene in Momanwada area as he tried to click at violence.
The union of city press photographers and journalists, many of them were roughed up, have urged the city police commissioner V. K. Gupta to provide proper protection to them.
Meanwhile, the state chief minister told Star News in an interview that he was under no pressure to step down in the wake of rioting in the state.
Earlier, Muslim leaders and other prominent personalities had demanded immediate ban on VHP and Bajrang Dal and dismissal of the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat besides handing over the entire state to the army to help restore normalcy in the strife-torn state.
At their meeting with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, they complained that the state government had failed to protect the lives of the people and demanded that the government should be dismissed or at least the chief minister should be asked to resign.
However, admitting that the situation in rural Gujarat was a cause for concern, Modi claimed that normalcy was returning to the state. “I cannot say that the situation is normal but the situation is definitely moving towards normalcy. The number of deaths has come down in Ahmedabad. Most of the people being killed are due to police firing. The government cannot be lenient with the rioters, we have to take strong steps,” said Modi.
Speaking at a press conference, he said there has been a slander campaign going against the army and termed it as unfortunate. “It has happened for the first time in Gujarat that within 24 hours of occurrence of communal violence, the army arrived here and was deployed wherever their need was felt. However, there is an attempt to malign the army,” Modi said.
Meanwhile, Congress President Sonia Gandhi is likely to stage a sit-in (dharna) in Parliament on Monday in protest against the continued killing in Gujarat and Central and State government’s failure in maintaining law and order situation in the state, party sources said.
Sonia, who had earlier strongly condemned the killings, had demanded that the disturbed areas in Gujarat be handed over immediately to the army to ensure security of life and property of the people.
The party MPs belonging to both houses of Parliament could also join her in the dharna.
Vajpayee’s troubles however appeared to stem more from his own rightwing Hindu ranks than from the opposition.
The fanatical Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a hardline faction of the ruling BJP, the death of whose volunteers in the attack on a train on Wednesday triggered the orgy of violence in Gujarat, said on Sunday it will stick to its March 15 deadline for the start of the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya.
VHP international working president Ashok Singhal rejected the Centre’s appeal to postpone its plan to shift the carved stones to the site of a razed mosque in Ayodhya in view of the prevailing situation in the country.
He said that Hindu religious leaders would meet in Delhi on Monday to discuss the curbs being put in different parts of the country on kar sevaks on their way to Ayodhya to attend related religious ritual.
The leaders are also expected to meet Prime Minister Vajpayee before Wednesday. “If he calls us with respect we will definitely go,” Singhal said.
NEW DELHI, March 3: Army units fanned out across the communally sensitive regions of India’s western state of Gujarat on Sunday, where the death toll after four days of religious violence was believed to have crossed 500, official sources said.
