AHMEDABAD, April 21: Twelve people, including a policeman, were killed and around 71 others injured on Sunday in fresh violence in Gujarat as Defence Minister George Fernandes toured the riot-torn state.
A policeman was hacked to death by a mob in the Gomtipur area of Gujarat’s commercial capital Ahmedabad and violence soon spread to the Bapunagar and Rakhial localities, police and witnesses said.
Eight others died in police firing in three localities of Kheda district, police sources here said.
Two people were stabbed to death, while another died in a petrol bomb attack.
Witnesses said police refused to go to Gomtipur as they were “scared”. Instead the army and the Rapid Action Force, India’s riot police, were deployed in parts of the area where Hindu and Muslim mobs were engaged in street fights.
A curfew has been imposed in Gomtipur.
At least 71 people were injured in clashes and from police firing in the various violence-torn areas of the city.
In overnight violence, police opened fire on mobs involved in arson, killing two people in Kheda district’s Kapadwanj and Mehmedabad blocks.
Police also fired on mobs which set on fire 30 shops and houses in Kadi town in Mehsana district on Sunday afternoon leaving 11 injured.
Some houses were set ablaze in Nagpurvora chawl in Gomtipur where 10 people, including three women, were injured in clashes and two in police firing. Police resorted to firing tear gas shells to scare away the rioters.
Defence Minister Fernandes arrived in Gujarat on Saturday and visited relief camps, where some 97,000 people are languishing after losing their homes and businesses.
The minister on Sunday met Gujarat industrialists.
After the meeting, Fernandes told reporters that “some people were trying to keep communal riots alive in the state”.
“We still do not know who these people are but we are trying to find who they could be,” Fernandes said.
More than 850 people, most of them Muslims, have been killed in Gujarat since February 27, when a Muslim mob attacked a train carrying Hindu hardliners, killing 58 people.
The rioting has refused to abate and occasional spurts of violence still occur.
During his tour, Fernandes also held discussions with various religious heads to work out a programme for the restoration of peace in the state.
“We will be making concerted efforts to mend the broken relationship between people and towards this goal, we will hold a huge peace rally on April 28 in Ahmedabad,” he said.
“This will be first in a series of steps that we will be taking to bring people of Gujarat together to live in brotherhood. We will carry on our efforts till we succeed.”
PEOPLE PESSIMISTIC: Ahmedabad’s police chief said the violence had been quelled by Sunday evening after large-scale rioting earlier in the day.
“There are no concrete reasons for the violence except that rumours trigger the gathering of crowds that indulge in hurling stones and bulbs filled with acid,” the police chief said.
People in Ahmedabad said they had little hope the violence would end soon.
“People without anything to do are creating trouble. And the government does not seem to be interested in controlling the violence,” said Raju Bhai Yadav, a taxi driver in Ahmedabad.
Raghuveer Patel, a cigarette vendor in the city, blamed the violence on “politics”.
The violence has plunged the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into a deep political crisis as both the opposition and allies within the coalition government question its ability, or will, to control the bloodshed.
The renewed violence is expected to provide fodder to those who have demanded the BJP sack Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a BJP man, accusing him of turning a blind eye to the killings of Muslims.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has stood by Modi and rejected calls for his removal.
The BJP’s critics have paralysed the parliament since it reconvened last week, demanding a vote on a motion of censure over the Gujarat tragedy.
Efforts to resolve the deadlock failed on Friday as the government refused to agree to a vote and opposition groups were expected to block business when the chambers meet on Monday.
The renewed Hindu-Muslim clashes were expected to increase pressure on the Indian government, facing its biggest crisis since it took office in 1999, over its failure to contain riots in Gujarat.
The weekend violence was the most widespread in more than a month and suggested India’s worst religious bloodshed in a decade had little chance of petering out in the near future. —AFP/Reuters
AHMEDABAD, April 21: Twelve people, including a policeman, were killed and around 71 others injured on Sunday in fresh violence in Gujarat as Defence Minister George Fernandes toured the riot-torn state.
