MUMBAI, 14 February 2008 — Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray and Samajwadi Party state unit President Abu Asim Azmi were briefly arrested yesterday for inciting violence. Both were released on bail within an hour of their arrest.

Public prosecutors asked Vikroli and Bhoiwada courts, where the two had been produced, for four days police custody of the two and also requested that their mobile phones be seized in order to investigate who they had contacted after their provocative speeches in Mumbai. Defense lawyers opposed this saying there was no need for custody as everything had been recorded by the police. The judges thereafter granted the accused bail.

Earlier, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil, cutting short his visit to Latur district came to Mumbai and ordered the police at a high-level meeting to arrest Raj and Azmi.

Patil, speaking to the media after his meeting with the top police officials, said that the government had enough evidence that Raj and Azmi had incited people to violence for their political benefits and warned that such acts would not be tolerated. He said the state government was prepared to face any backlash over their arrests.

“The police have been instructed to deal firmly with those indulging in violence and causing any harm to the innocent citizens,” Patil said.

The general secretary of the MNS, Vasant Gite, was detained by the Nashik police as a preventive action a few hours prior to the arrest of Raj Thackeray.

Nashik Police Commissioner Shamshuddin Sayad said that apart from Gite, police have also detained three other prominent MNS leaders and the number of the MNS workers arrested since Tuesday had risen to 126 in Nashik.

According to a senior state Home Department official, police have arrested 2,000 MNS workers in Maharashtra in two days.

Meanwhile, the exodus of north Indian and south Indian migrants continued yesterday from Nashik, Solapur and Pune. More than 12,000 migrants had fled from Nashik fearing attacks by the MNS, 10,000 from Solapur, 6,000 from Mumbai and 4,000 from Pune. Railway stations were crowded with migrants scrambling to board trains bound for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Nagma Begum from Bhagalpur in Bihar gave birth to a child on Bhagalpur Express near Bandra yesterday afternoon after refusing to get down and seek medical care fearing her family would be attacked if she alighted from the train. She told reporters that a few hours before she boarded the train, some MNS workers had beaten her husband up and also slapped her.

The exodus of migrants has badly hit small-scale industries in Nashik. Dhanraj Bele, president of the Ambad Industries and Manufacturers Association (AIMA) in Nashik, said yesterday that nearly 40 percent of small and medium industries had closed down since the violence erupted 10 days ago and caused a loss of Rs.300 million.

MNS workers continued their rampage in Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad, Amravati, Buldhana, Latur, Dhule, Nanded, Ahmednagar, Beed and Osmanabad yesterday. They torched shops and buses in Nashik. In Aurangabad the situation was equally tense as some shops were damaged and five buses set on fire. In Nagpur, an unruly mob damaged some shops and set fire to seven buses.