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AHMEDABAD, April 26: Authorities clamped new curfews on Friday on parts of Ahmedabad after fresh communal violence on Thursday night left one dead and 11 injured.
Curfews were imposed in western and eastern parts of the city, which has borne the brunt of the country’s deadliest communal violence in a decade that erupted in February.
Although violence has subsided in most parts of Gujarat since peaking last month, renewed rioting in Ahmedabad has killed 35 people since Sunday.
“They (Hindus) provoke us (Muslims) by yelling insults and bursting crackers during the night,” said Iqbal Kansara, a resident of Juhapura, the single largest Muslim area in Gujarat with nearly 250,000 Muslims, where a curfew was imposed.
“Youngsters who can’t stand the insults come out to retaliate and then police fire at them.”
While the situation was quiet for the moment in Gujarat, police were on high alert for more trouble, a senior official said.
CENSURE MOTION: Charges that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads the federal coalition government and also rules Gujarat, has failed to act to contain the violence, have plunged it into a deep crisis.
The violence will be debated in parliament next week when lawmakers debate an opposition-sponsored censure motion but so far, the 30-month-old administration appears to be in no danger of falling, political analysts say.
Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, fired a new volley at the government on Friday, accusing it of threatening the country’s secular foundations.
“An India whose secular moorings and foundations are being systematically destroyed cannot flourish,” she told business leaders in New Delhi. “A handful of fanatical individuals deliberately intolerant of other faiths are out to destroy this precious heritage.”—Reuters
