PATNA, India, 4 January 2003 — More than 1,000 people were arrested and around 100, including a number of politicians, were injured in eastern India yesterday in violent protests after police allegedly gunned down three innocent men in cold blood, officials said.
Police fired several hundred rounds in the air and also lobbed tear gas shells to control crowds at a number of places in the state of Bihar — mainly in the state capital Patna — where a strike was called to protest the killings.
Police, who have denied any wrongdoing in the killings, said 100 people were injured, including 50 policemen who were pelted with stones by protesters standing on rooftops.
But opposition BJP leaders, who were supporting the strike, said all 100 injured were its activists and that they were hurt by the police. The injured included state party leader Shushil Modi, former Health Minister C.P. Thakur and two legislators, the BJP said.
Two government offices were set on fire, more than a dozen vehicles were burned, including two buses, and a police outpost at Dumra in Patna was attacked by the mob. In Ara town, 75 km from Patna, an angry mob torched a police jeep, injuring the police driver. Demonstrators also set a market building on fire and attacked an office of the water board in Patna.
An employee of the state government office confirmed a mob of up to 50 people stormed it and tried to set it on fire.
“Forty to fifty persons armed with sticks carrying petrol in bottles entered the office around noon and attempted to torch the office,” said N.K. Singh.
Vehicles were off the streets and many people stayed indoors during the strike, called by youth organizations as well as opposition parties.
Indian Railways took the unprecedented step of stopping 200 trains for 12 hours in the state, fearing the worst after a similar strike on Tuesday ended with 50 people injured and 500 arrested.
Some 2,000 riot police and 10,000 state police were deployed in Patna, a police spokesman told AFP. The three men were killed Saturday when police opened fire “during an encounter with robbers”, according to a spokesman. Police have denied the officers acted illegally.
The victims’ families, however, say they were not robbers and that the police shot them in “cold blood” during a “fake encounter.”
One of the five policemen involved in the incident has been arrested and jailed. A search is on to find the missing four and the state government has launched a high-level inquiry.
