NEW DELHI, 5 May 2006 — India’s Supreme Court yesterday banned the demolition of all religious structures, including mosques and shrines, in the western state of Gujarat. A two-judge bench of the court comprising Justice Ruma Pal and Justice Dalveer Bhandari stayed a Gujarat High Court order that directed authorities to remove all religious structures encroaching on public land across the state.

The Supreme Court acted on an urgent appeal by the federal government which apparently was worried by widespread violence in Gujarat’s Baroda town after municipal authorities pulled down a 300-year-old Muslim shrine.

Separately, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a rights group, has filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the appointment of P.C. Pande as Gujarat’s police chief. Pande, who was Ahmedabad’s police commissioner during anti-Muslim riots in 2002, was appointed last week as director general of Gujarat police by the state government run by the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party. In the public interest petition filed Tuesday, CJP Secretary Teesta Setalvad said that during Pande’s tenure as police commissioner, more than 700 people died in Ahmedabad. Several independent tribunals and fact-finding bodies have established that Pande was at least partially responsible for letting the communal violence in Gujarat worsen, the petition states.

The petition also blames Pande for having visited Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society — where 34 people were killed in March 2002 — and of turning a blind eye when it was attacked by a frenzied Hindu mob.

The Supreme Court order came as soldiers were ordered to support police in Baroda, where clashes since Monday between Hindus and Muslims have left six people dead, scores injured and many shops gutted.

The federal government has told Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to avoid a repeat of the 2002 riots, a top Home (interior) Ministry source said. “Law and order is a state issue but Gujarat has been told in clear terms to stem the violence,” he said, warning that more troops would be deployed if local police turned a blind eye to the clashes.

Some 1,500 soldiers were rushed to Gujarat after a Muslim trader was burned alive in his car on Tuesday.

The thinly-veiled federal warning came after Baroda’s Muslims complained that when they telephoned the city police for protection a gruff voice advised them to “return to Pakistan.”

— Additional input from agencies