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| Sunday, 14 April 2002 |
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Hindus plan protest in riot-torn Indian town BOMBAY, April 12 (Reuters) - Hardline Indian Hindu groups plan to defy a curfew and stage a mass protest on Friday over religious clashes that killed three people, stoking fears of further trouble. Protest organisers said they would call out 10,000 supporters on to the streets of Rohidaswada, 60 km (40 miles) north of India's commercial capital, Bombay, to demand action against Muslims they charge with attacking Hindus earlier this week. Two Hindus and a Muslim died in Tuesday's violence, which came after at least 820 people died in neighbouring Gujarat state at the end of February and at the beginning of March in the country's worst religious bloodshed in a decade. Rohidaswada, which has been under curfew since Tuesday, was tense on Friday and police vowed to block the protest. "We want peace, we don't want trouble," Raghunath More, district chief of the Shiv Sena party told Reuters. "But if the police don't take action we won't be able to control our people. "We feel the attack on Hindu houses was pre-planned. The Muslims want Maharashtra also to burn like Gujarat." The Shiv Sena is a powerful regional party in western Maharashtra state -- where Bombay is located -- and is a member of Prime Minster Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government. "The BJP, the Shiv Sena and other Hindu groups including the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad are coming together to take out a morcha (procession)," More said. More said the groups were demanding the arrest of a local Muslim politician they accuse of leading rioters. District police chief S.M. Shangari vowed to block the march. "I will not allow them to do this. The curfew is on for another 24 hours," Shangari said. He said there were no fresh Hindu-Muslim clashes in the town but some incidents of mobs pelting stones at buildings and ransacking shops were reported on Thursday night. The Gujarat riots erupted after a Muslim mob attacked a train, burning alive 59 Hindu activists. It was India's worst religious violence since about 3,000 people died after Hindu hardliners tore down a mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya in late 1992. Bombay was one of the worst hit areas in that violence -- more than 800 people died -- and police in the city are on alert after the outbreak in Rohidaswada. |
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