Two more Indian state has been engulfed in religious violence. This time, it is in the western state of Maharashtra and the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Other states in which religious violence is raging are: Orissa, Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Kashmir. ====================================== 3 killed in communal clashes in Andhra Pradesh http://timesofindia. 10 Oct 2008, 2212 hrs IST,TNN BHAINSA (ANDHRA PRADESH): Three people were killed and six seriously injured in rioting and clashes between two communities in Bhainsa in Adilabad district on Friday afternoon. The district police said the situation was tense but under control. Additional forces have been rushed and prohibitory orders clamped on the town. Clashes were also reported from Nirmal town in the district and police have imposed prohibitory orders there as well as a precautionary measure. According to police, the clashes occurred when a Durga Puja procession was passing by devotees offering Friday prayers at a mosque. "The Durga Devi shobha yatra (procession) reached Masjid Panjeshah in central market around 1.00pm when devotees objected to the Durga processionists playing songs when their prayers were under way. This led to stone-pelting by both the groups and grew into rioting, stabbing and burning of shops and vehicles," one official said. Police rushed to the spot and tried to cool tempers and get the groups to talk to each other but their efforts went in vain. The clashes did not stop even after police resorted to a lathicharge. Finally, they fired 35 rounds of ammunition in the air. In all, about 40 shops and 12 vehicles were torched by the rival mobs. The dead were identified as Afsar Ahmed, 24, Abdul Kayyum, 22 and Bhutan, said to be a Marathi immigrant."All three died because of stabbing," Adilabad collector Ahmed Nadim told TOI. Adilabad Congress MP A Indrasena Reddy too told TOI that he had seen the bodies and found only stab wounds and no bullet injuries. Abdul Majid, who sustained a serious bullet injury in the firing, was shifted to Nizamabad first and then to Hyderabad. He is in a critical condition. Peace committees belonging to the two communities have been set up to initiate a dialogue, the collector added. Referring to Nirmal, Nadim said a few people had gathered there but were quickly dispersed and ban orders clamped. Adilabad SP Anil Kumar told TOI that the situation was tense but under control and that Section 144 had been imposed on the town to ensure normalcy. Observers said there was a major bungling by the district administration in allowing the Hindu procession to cross a mosque on a Friday afternoon. Not only that, the Durga puja procession, which comprised about 500 people, was accompanied by only one circle inspector, one sub-inspector and four constables. "In a town which has had communal clashes in the past, such inadequate measures are shocking," said one senior official. ====================================== MAHARASHTRA: 5 days later, Dhule still under curfew http://timesofindia. 11 Oct 2008, 0405 hrs IST, Prafulla Marpakwar ,TNN MUMBAI: Days after communal clashes rocked the tribal Dhule district in north Maharashtra, the area is still tense. However, no fresh incidents of violence have been reported. According to reports, properties worth Rs 25 crore were completely razed to ashes in the violence. "We have clamped indefinite curfew in the entire district. There were no fresh incidents of violence in the area on Thursday and Friday," said Sanjay Chahande, Nashik divisional commissioner. Following directives of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, not only chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, but even Union minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal visited the trouble-torn district to see for themselves the post-violence situation. On Tuesday, the situation was so tense that the state administration was planning to deploy the army. However, the proposal was abandoned following strong opposition by the local police. Senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse has demanded a probe under the Commission of Enquiry Act. "I feel the probe should be conducted under the Commission of Enquiry Act and pending the probe, both collector P Lawangare and superintendent of police Sunil Kolhe should be asked to proceed on leave," Khadse said. Khadse was the first politician to alert both Lawangare and Kolhe on the possibility of violence during a procession on October 5. Soon after the process started, Khadse personally spoke to both the collector and SP, saying more policemen should be deployed on the procession route since he had specific information on the possibility of violence. "Both assured me that adequate police bandobast will be deployed, but unfortunately they did not take this information seriously," Khadse said. Alleging that it was a complete failure of the law enforcing agencies, Khadse pointed out that the manner in which the district administration tackled the communal violence leads one to the conclusion that there was complete lack of coordination among the district agencies. "Additional forces from neighbouring Jalgaon district rushed to Dhule, but they were sitting idle for well over 3 hours as there were no instructions for them," Khadse said. A senior home department official on Friday admitted that there was complete collapse of the law and order situation in Dhule. "We imposed curfew in the entire district, but for the first three days, there were not enough officials to implement the prohibitory orders. Later, it was implemented, but only in select areas, which clearly reflected bias on the part of the police," the official said. ====================================== [NOTE: Following a government directive, the police is now referring to Christians as "Pana Dalits" and spinning this as an "ethnic conflict" rather than religious persecution. You will notice that for the last week or so, all reporting on Orissa violence spins it as an "ethnic problem"] Orissa: Rioters torch eight houses in Boudh district http://www.hindustantimes.com/ Reuters Bhubaneswar, October 09, 2008 First Published: 16:45 IST(9/10/2008) Last Updated: 16:53 IST(9/10/2008) Unable to create trouble in Orissa's riot-hit Kandhamal for about a week due to tight security, rioters sneaked into neighbouring Boudh district and set afire eight houses, police said on Thursday. A group of miscreants from Gochhapada area in Kandhamal entered adjoining Kantamal police station area of Boudh late last night and torched the houses at Lamsaripali village, Deputy Inspector General of Police RP Koche told PTI. Some of the arsonists, including their leaders were arrested as police reached the area and swung into action after getting information about the incident, he said. No one was injured in the attack by suspected tribals and the damaged houses belonged to 'Pana' dalits, giving an indication that the incident involved ethnic problems and not communal conflict, Deputy Superintendent of Police K P Mund said. Police movement to the area was affected as the attackers had blocked roads by felling trees, he said adding that the village was also located atop a hill. Additional security personnel including one company of CRPF jawans and three platoons of Orissa State Armed Police have been deployed in the area to prevent any major flare up, Mund said. Flag march was held by the security personnel in a bid to instill confidence among local residents. Miscreants who had set afire over 100 houses had attacked some villages of Kantamal area about a fortnight ago. =========================================== Assam victims await relief http://www.asianage.com/ Friday, October 10, 2008 BY MANOJ ANAND UDALGURI, ASSAM Oct. 9: The communal clashes in northern Assam may have subsided but with over one lakh people displaced, the biggest challenge before the state administration is to rehabilitate them back to their respective villages. More than 500 houses have so far been destroyed in the communal clashes in northern Assam's Udalguri and Darrange districts. Hanif languishing in a relief camp at Dalgaon said, "We want to go back to our home and land. If the situation does not improve, it would be difficult for us to survive in this relief camp where every thing is scarcely available." He suggests that the administration should take steps to improve the situation. "In remote village areas, there is hardly any presence of the security forces," he added. The students taking shelter in relief camps are concerned about their education. They are also scared to go out of the relief camps and accused inadequate supply of relief materials to the camp inmates. Some camp inmates feared the outbreak of water-born diseases among children. Hundreds of children are also languishing in the camps. The Union minister of state for external affairs E. Ahamed announced that the Centre will provide one-month rations to over 1.5 lakh people affected in ethnic violence and additional forces to tackle the situation and in the confidence building among victims. However, if past records of the Assam government in rehabilitating displaced people are any indicator, the charge of riot victims in northern Assam that administration was not sincere in its approach of getting them back to their respective villages may come true. Adivasis, who were pushed to relief camps in Kokrajhar during the 1996 Bodo-Adivasi riots, are yet to be rehabilitated. Bengali immigrant Muslims, also victims of Bodo-Muslim riots, have been waiting to return home since the last fifteen years in western Assam. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who visited the trouble-torn districts on Thursday, said that the affected were genuine Indian citizens and his government would ensure that their rights were protected. He claimed that influx was not the crux of the problem and assured that additional forces would be provided to deal with the situation. ====================================== 9 more bodies found in Assam, toll is 60 http://www.asianage.com/ Thursday, October 09, 2008 BY MANOJ ANAND UDALGURI, ASSAM Oct. 8: The violence has subsided but fear of fresh backlashes is looming large among those taking shelter in various relief camps. The death toll in Assam carnage has gone up to 60, following recovery of nine more bodies from the remote areas of trouble-torn Northern Assam districts since Tuesday. The security sources said that three bodies were recovered from Panbari area of Darrang district, while two bodies each were found from Paschim Hahiligaon in Tangla area, Mazbat and Jhargaon of Udalguri district. There were reports of some more bodies being spotted in Kalaigaon, and Rajapukhuri areas of Udalguri district. However, there was no report of fresh violence from any part of the state. The superintendent of police, during whose tenure worst violence hit Udalguri district, Mr R.N. Prakash Tiwari told this newspaper that the police is maintaining a close watch over the situation and it was limping back to normalcy. He, however, admitted that there were reports of more bodies spotted in some of the remote villages. "We are sending police teams in all those areas wherever there are reports of unattended bodies. We are trying to recover the bodies of all those killed in the violence at the earliest as recovery of bodies after normalcy may be counter-productive and worsen the situation again," said Mr Tiwari, who was patrolling the area and interacting with the camp inmates to instil confidence in them. Meanwhile, camp inmates in trouble-torn Udalguri district have raised serious doubts over the role of Assam ministers and charged them of projecting the recent carnage as an ethnic clash between the immigrant Muslims and the NDFB, which is a largely Christian outfit. Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was quoted as saying that the rebel National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), fighting for an independent tribal homeland, took advantage of the situation and resorted to large scale arson and killings. |
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