NEW DELHI, 6 May — Senior police officials in the riot-torn western Indian state of Gujarat are reported to have said that they were instructed to go soft on right Hindu groups, The Hindustan Times said yesterday.
The newspaper said Indian Police Service (IPS) officers told K.P.S. Gill, the newly appointed security adviser to the state chief minister, Saturday that the directive was given to them at a meeting of top officials on the night of train torching in Godhra on Feb. 27.
For the lower ranks of the state police this order was construed as inaction against Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal which led to reports of police remaining a silent spectator as violence continued against Muslims.
In a series of meetings aimed at bringing peace to the state, IPS officers told Gill that the force in the state was demoralized due to transfers of officers who initiated action against Bajrang Dal and Parishad workers.
The senior officers had even demanded an urgent meeting of the IPS Officers’ Association to discuss the issue.
Gill was police chief of Punjab and is credited with effectively rooting out terrorism in the state.
His new assignment was kept under wraps till Saturday when Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi himself announced that Gill was there to bring more professionalism to the force.
Meanwhile, three people, including a three-year old boy, were killed and more than 30 injured yesterday in fresh Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat, after a nearly week-long calm, police said.
One man was stabbed to death in the old quarter of Ahmedabad, the state’s main city, and a boy died of wounds sustained from a crude bomb that exploded in a busy market-place in the afternoon, police said. The third man was burned alive. Police did not identify the religion of the victims.
"Several areas of the city witnessed clashes between Hindus and Muslims. An indefinite curfew has been imposed in two areas," a senior police official told Reuters.
More than 900 people, mostly Muslims, have died in waves of revenge killings in Gujarat since February.
The violence, which peaked in March, has continued to rock Ahmedabad, which bore the brunt of the country’s worst religious bloodletting in a decade.
Violence in Ahmedabad began yesterday after a group of Muslims returned to their homes from a refugee camp, a senior police official said.
"Hindus took objection to the return of Muslims to the area from camps and this led to pelting of stones at each other and burning of shops," the official said.
Some 100,000 people, mainly Muslims, are sheltered in relief camps in Gujarat. Many have lost their homes in arson attacks or are too terrified to return for fear of being targeted by Hindus, relief workers say.
Rioting groups of Hindus and Muslims also torched nearly 30 scrap metal shops and several houses in eastern Ahmedabad, where Hindus and Muslims live in close proximity.
Additional paramilitary forces have been moved in to prevent fresh violence in the city, police said.
