BARODA, 26 December 2002 — Two Muslims were stabbed to death and nine people seriously wounded in Hindu-Muslim rioting in western Gujarat state, the scene of India’s worst religious violence in a decade earlier this year, police said yesterday.

Men who had come by motorcycle stabbed a Muslim man after mobs from the Hindu and Muslim communities came to blows late Tuesday in Baroda, some 120 kilometers north of the state capital Gandhinagar.

D.D. Tuteja, the city’s police commissioner, said rival mobs of majority Hindus and minority Muslims threw stones at one another. At least six Muslim homes, and three scooters and a car were burned in the violence.

Seven people — five Muslims and two Hindus — were hospitalized in serious condition, Tuteja said.

Police opened fire to disperse the crowd and two people were wounded by gunshots, he said.

Tuteja said Hindus stabbed two Muslims — Abdul Qadir and Mohammed Hamid — who both died in hospital.

Fresh violence was also reported last night from the Fatehpura quarter. "There was stone-pelting by both communities in the Fatehpura area which led to large scale rumor mongering in Baroda. The situation was brought under control immediately by police," said Pritamsingh Thakur, city joint commissioner of police. Police fired one round in the air to disperse the rioting mob.

"One person has been injured in stone-pelting, but it is a minor injury," Thakur said.

"As soon as rioting started in the Fatehpura, we got the news at the mosques. In a short span of time, as rumors spread in the city everybody downed their shutters and left for home," said Zubeir Gopalani, a resident of Baroda.

The violence comes in the wake of bloody communal riots in Gujarat and a resounding re-election in Dec. 12 provincial polls of the Hindu extremist BJP party. More than 100 Muslims were killed in Baroda in that rioting.

The BJP had campaigned openly on the plank of Hindutva — a euphemism for right-wing Hindu fundamentalism.

Led by the state’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the party capitalized on the rioting that was sparked by the burning to death of 58 people on a train on Feb. 27 in the town of Godhra, allegedly by a mob of Muslims.

Muslims were the main victims of the ensuing communal violence which left up to 2,000 people dead, according to human rights groups. (AP/AFP)