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Gujarat town tense after mob violence

At least 10 policemen were seriously injured and 13 police vehicles were vandalised in Bhuj town of Gujarat’s border district of Kutch when protests by large group of Muslims against a Facebook comment by a Hindu boy turned violent on the eve of Eid.

The police said as many as 1,500 Muslims gathered at a police station in Sarpat gate area on Sunday evening protesting Bhalesh Gadhvi’s widely-circulated FB post that the mob felt “cast aspersions on their religion”.

The police had arrested the teenager from nearby Mandvi town soon after a complaint on Saturday and booked him under section 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class) of the Indian Penal Code. But the crowds who had started descending on the police station on Sunday evening after getting wind of the boy’s arrest wanted the authorities to hand over Gadhvi to them for being beaten up in public to “teach him a lesson”.

When the Kutch district superintendent D N Patel refused to do so and said that the teen would be taken to a court of law, the crowds went on a rampage, pelting the law-keepers with stones and vandalising their vehicles parked nearby.

A home department official told Khaleej Times that when elderly Muslims also failed to pacify the angry mob, the police had to lob 10 tear gas shells and then fire 20 rounds in the air to disperse the protesters.

Ten policemen, including a police photographer, injured in the mob violence were hospitalised and 70 vehicles, including two police jeeps and 11 two-wheelers, were badly damaged in the communal incident which, he said, had now tarnished the image of Bhuj as a peaceful town. Bhuj was tense when this report went to the press as the police have banned the assembly of more than four people in many areas of the town. mahesh@khaleejtimes.com