NEW DELHI, March 20: Two people were killed by police in Gujarat on Wednesday where India’s usually respected National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) began a suo moto probe into the virulent and bloody campaign of anti-Muslim violence.

Former supreme court chief justice J.S. Verma and head of the NHRC arrived in the state at the head of a delegation ostensibly to fix responsibility for the widely-seen dereliction of duty by many state officials in preventing the pogroms in which 2,000 people may have been killed, reports and rights groups said.

A leading secular parliamentarian Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said on Wednesday that people were still being killed in different parts of the state. The point of view was echoed in a discussion on an officially-sponsored anti-terrorist bill in which opposition leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and government ally Devendra Prasad Singh both expressed fears of its misuse to target Muslims.

Law minister Arun Jaitley said the POTO anti-terrorism legislation would be passed through a joint session of the parliament’s two houses soon as it was likely to be rejected by the Rajya Sabha when it takes up the bill on Thursday.

An NHRC delegation, headed by its chairman Justice Verma, arrived in Ahmedabad on Wednesday to take an independent view of the violence that rocked parts of Gujarat since Feb 27, an Indian news agency said.

It said the team would also visit Vadodara and Godhra during its three-day tour.

The NHRC had earlier issued a notice to the state government on March 1 seeking information about the violent incidents in the state.

The commission had taken note of the facts related to the violence and stepped-in to prevent any negligence in the protection of human rights of the people in the state irrespective of their religion, Verma had said in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Human rights activist Teesta Setalvad who visited Gujarat recently has estimated that 2000 people, overwhelmingly Muslims, may have been killed and 150,000 people had been internally displaced.

Columnists and journalists have wondered why Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who announced plans in parliament to visit Kashmir to ensure free elections there, has not yet indicated that he would visit Gujarat too.

Reports said normalcy prevailed across Gujarat even as the curfew continued in Modasa and Bharuch towns on Wednesday as a precautionary measure.

At least two people were killed in police firing in the Vatva area of Ahmedabad on Wednesday afternoon and indefinite curfew has been clamped in Himatnagar town of Sabarkantha district, news reports said.