NEW DELHI, March 19: Four persons were killed and five injured in India’s Gujarat state on Tuesday in a fresh communal upsurge that appeared set to worsen in the days ahead as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) announced plans to take processions of the charred remains of a train carnage in Godhra to different parts of the country with a view to capitalizing on the stirred-up sentiments, reliable reports said.
The reports said that in an outbreak of violence in Bharuch and Modasa towns of Gujarat, four persons were killed and five injured when police opened fire to disperse a rioting mob. Trouble began when a mob gathered at Dandia Bazar and other old city area and indulged in rioting at around 1.30pm. Police had to open fire to quell the mob.
In Gandhinagar, the state Home Minister Gordhan Zadaphia said he was sending reinforcements to Bharuch and Modasda in view of the fresh violence.
On Monday evening, an 18-year-old school student was killed near Shaktinath Mahadev area while he was returning home after appearing for the school board exams. Miscreants pulled out the boy from the auto-rickshaw and hit him on the head. The boy died of serious head injuries.
Human rights activists who have just returned from a survey of the Gujarat told a news conference in New Delhi that the death toll from the carnage that began on Feb 28 was already about 2000. They said the violence was planned days before a train carriage carrying VHP activists was set on fire by suspected Muslims on Feb 27.
The precision and viciousness of the violence was worse than the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the 1992-93 anti-Muslim violence in Mumbai, they said.
“Delhi 1984 and Bombay 1993 were mere glimpses of what we were going to see,” rights activists Teesta Setalvad said. She said 2,500 people were officially declared missing and some of them may have turned into ashes. There are 150,000 internally displaced people in Gujarat, about 50,000 of them sheltered in relief camps.
In a move that could only worsen the communal divide, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad said it was finalising a country-wide programme for the ashes of victims of the Godhra train massacre to be taken to 750 different places all over the country. However, Gujarat is expected to be left out of this programme for the time being.
VHP’s joint general secretary in Gujarat, Jaideep Patel was quoted by reporters as saying that “the kalash yatras” containing ashes of the Godhra victims in urns will be taken out all over the country in the coming weeks and months. “The programme is being finalised at a national level by our central office in Delhi,” Patel said. He said the processions would be a tribute to the VHP activists who were killed for the cause of construction of the Ram temple.
For Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee the VHP move would be like his worst fears coming true. On Tuesday, even as his Bharatiya Janata Party deputies celebrated four years, albeit after two elections, in power, there was a clear division of opinion within the right-wing Hindu ranks about his stance towards the hard-liners.
For the moment though Vajpayee has enough moves in his hand to keep the hostile colleagues and the angry opposition busy elsewhere.
On Tuesday, his government said it has decided to go for a joint sitting of the Houses of Parliament if the Rajya Sabha rejects the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, 2002. The bill to replace the much-criticised Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, 2001, was passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday.
According to agency reports, it is now almost certain that the bill would be defeated in the Upper House as none of the Opposition parties are ready to support it and the ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a majority there.
The main Opposition Congress issued a three-line whip to its members in both the Houses to be present if a joint sitting is held and “defend the party stand,” party sources said.
