AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI, 11 May — The police chief of the riot-torn western state of Gujarat was transferred as fresh Hindu-Muslim violence in Ahmedabad yesterday left at least five people dead and 40 injured. Three persons were killed in police firing in different parts of Ahmedabad city while one person was stabbed and another burned to death.
The Gujarat administration transferred state Police Commissioner P.C. Pande late Thursday amid intense criticism of his handling of the riots that have claimed nearly 1,000 lives in the past 10 weeks. Pande and other police officers in Gujarat have been accused of turning a blind eye to the bloody anti-Muslim backlash that followed an attack on a train carrying Hindu activists on Feb. 27.
Pande was replaced by Additional Director General of Police K.R. Kaushik.
The transfer coincided with a fresh bout of communal violence that has left around 30 people dead in the past five days and prompted an additional deployment of riot police and commandos in Gujarat.
Early yesterday morning around 500 Hindus and Muslims, carrying swords and pelting each other with stones, clashed along the bank of the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad. Police said at least 40 people were injured and flames were seen billowing from many houses, but fire officials refused to respond to repeated emergency calls.
Firefighters went on strike Thursday night after a mob attack. Despite the fire brigade having remained above sectarian schism in fighting communal blazes, they were not spared. A Hindu mob attacked sons of two firefighters on Thursday evening, one an 18-year-old Muslim, the other a 20-year-old Hindu. The two were stabbed and severely beaten when they went to visit a friend in a Hindu neighborhood, Khadia. When an ambulance was sent to take the victims to hospital, the mob beat up the fire brigade rescuers, overturned the ambulance and set it on fire.
A few hours later in another neighborhood, a mob dragged five fire brigade officers out of an ambulance, beat them and set fire to the rescue vehicle. Describing the attacks on fire brigade officials as “barbaric”, Ahmedabad Mayor Himmat Sinh Patel said: “These people have been working 24 hours a day since Feb. 28, even facing abuses and assaults by mobs.”
Fire brigade officials ended their strike yesterday after appeals from Muslims in relief camps. A senior fire brigade official said: “The way our men were beaten up yesterday (Thursday), who have been working like dogs for the last 70-odd days, we thought we would prolong the strike. But only on humanitarian grounds, we have withdrawn the strike after the mayor assured us of security.”
A police officer said a mosque in the city’s old quarter was razed and its debris set on fire. “It was like a war, both groups hurling bombs and stones at each other. They were also firing at each other,” said resident Rahul Bhavsar. “I have never seen anything like this before,” said one soldier, one of 4,000 deployed in Gujarat to help restore peace. A tailor said that Muslims — who make up around 12 percent of India’s one billion population — believed the majority Hindus were trying to force them to leave Ahmedabad. “This is aimed at driving us out. We will not go away just like that. We are fighting for our survival,” said Amir Sayeed. A curfew was imposed to end the fighting.
More than 70,000 people in Ahmedabad alone are crammed into relief camps with little more than large cloth sheets to protect them from the scorching summer heat, where temperatures rise to 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) on some days. Though the camps have become breeding grounds for typhoid, diarrhea and jaundice, the refugees are either afraid to return home or, their houses burned, no longer have anywhere to go.
