BARODA, India, 8 May 2006 — The relatives of those who died in communal violence here are angry with the police for their sluggish approach in arresting the culprits. Not a single suspect has been arrested for the brutal killings. Four days after Rafiq Vohra was set on fire, his brother still keeps reminding the police about the arrest of the 14 suspects he named in the FIR.
The police conducted a combing operation for two days in the Ajwa Road area and arrested about 25 people but were unable to apprehend those whose names figure in the complaint.
“The police claim they are investigating although I have named the suspects. The argument is that the culprits have gone underground,” said Mehmood Vohra.
Similarly, no arrests have taken place in cases of the stabbing of an ex-army man, Ramchandra Meena, and the killing of 25-year-old Viren Shah. “Though we have lodged a complaint, not a single person has been arrested. They do not even take any pains to act and keep saying that they will make arrests,” said Devang Shah, a friend of Viren. However, Assistant Commissioner of Police V.M. Pargi said: “Our first preference is to look at the law and order situation so that the city becomes peaceful again. A parallel investigation is going on in cases of violence and the culprits will in any case be nabbed.”
Mominkhan Pathan, a retired police officer and Rafiq Vohra’s neighbor, countered the police’s contention that their priority was to establish normalcy.
“Had they been so keen to restore peace in the city, they would have responded to the calls we made to police headquarters and police stations, requesting their intervention here,” remarked Pathan. There were cases, however, of police picking up innocent people. Farooq Arab, 42, a resident of Moghulwada, who had undergone a heart bypass surgery just a few months ago, had to sit in the police station for hours when a search team picked him up from his home Thursday night. “They just stormed into my home and turned everything upside down and took me to the police station,” said Arab. “The worst thing was that they were not ready to listen to anything and abused my wife when she objected to their mishandling of electronic goods,” he added.
