NEW DELHI, 1 March — Hindu mobs in the western Indian state of Gujarat yesterday went on a rampage, murdering Muslims and burning down their houses and businesses. At least 58 people were killed in widespread violence throughout the state. The killings followed the deaths a day earlier of 58 Hindus when their train was set on fire by enraged vendors at Godhra railway station who were refused payment.
The army was called out to help restore order in Ahmedabad, the commercial center of Gujarat, where a crowd set fire to a block of Muslim homes, killing a dozen children and 26 adults inside. A crowd of some 2,000 rioters stoned six Muslim-owned bungalows in a mostly Hindu neighborhood. The crowd then poured kerosene on the homes and set them ablaze, said P.B. Gondya, the deputy commissioner of police. “We have taken out 18 bodies,” M.K. Tandon, one of Ahmedabad’s two police commissioners, said. Police saw the bodies of 12 children, and between eight and 10 adults, still lying inside the smoldering remains of the homes in the Meghaninagar neighborhood, he said.
Officers at the city police control room said they had received several phone calls from a former member of Parliament, Ehsan Jafri, who also died in the fires. Police said they arrived two hours after the phone calls and the Fire Brigade officers were delayed by more than six hours because of the road blockades the Hindu mobs had erected on the city streets.
The police said that Jafri of the opposition Congress party had fired his licensed revolver into the air in a vain attempt to disperse the mob.
At one place, police fired at a crowd, killing two Hindus, but elsewhere in the city, they stood watching for hours or occasionally fired tear gas as gangs burned hotels, gas stations, cars, restaurants and shops, making bonfires of looted goods.
Smoke billowed over the skyline and police halted all traffic coming into the city. On the highways, gangs of young men, with sticks and iron rods, halted cars to ask whether Muslims or Hindus were inside. Hindus were allowed to proceed. Roadside tea and tobacco stalls, owned by Muslims, were burned to the ground
Narendra Modi, the state’s chief minister, said the army might also be deployed in some 26 other towns where a curfew was declared. Hindu fundamentalists said they would seek to spread their strike nationwide today.
Modi, a member of the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party, called the train burning an “organized terrorist attack” and said steps would be taken “so that no one dare repeat such a thing in future.” He insisted that, despite yesterday’s carnage, the reaction by Hindus “is that of restraint compared to what the terrorists did in Godhra.”
Police also reported incidents of looting and arson across Gujarat state, where 20,000 died in an earthquake in January last year, and many were frightened to use the roads for fear of mobs. One truck driver was stabbed to death on the main highway between Baroda and Bombay and his truck burned. Police said they had intervened to stop crowds from burning a mosque in Baroda, while in Gandhinagar, a government-funded Muslim office was set on fire. Police also used tear gas to control mobs in the town of Surat.
Police stepped up security across India, though no violent incidents were reported outside Gujarat. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met with Hindu and Muslim leaders in a bid to defuse the tension.
