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Indian police crush yoga guru’s graft protest

Indian police firing tear gas stormed a New Delhi camp to evict a mass protest against corruption by a yoga guru and thousands of followers, sparking violence that left more than 70 injured.

Opposition parties and anti-graft campaigners accused the government of resorting to heavy-handed tactics to crush the peaceful demonstration, which comes after a damaging series of corruption scandals.

Police used batons and dragged away demonstrators in the early-hours crackdown on a vast tent in the centre of the capital where Swami Baba Ramdev, a television yoga star, had begun a hunger strike on Saturday, witnesses said.

“We had given permission for only 5,000 people to attend his yoga camp but 50,000 turned up. We had not given any permission for a public agitation,” Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP.

Ramdev later said his fast would continue and he vowed to intensify his campaign, which has the backing of the main opposition party and several far-right Hindu nationalist groups.

“My fast is not over yet and I will continue with my satyagraha (civil resistance),” he told reporters from his residence in the town of Haridwar in northern India where he flew on Sunday morning.

“We will observe a ‘black day’ to protest the conspiracy and we will intensify our anti-corruption campaign across the country,” the eccentric activist added after accusing the government of trying to kill him.

A senior doctor in the hospital nearest to the protest site, Lok Nayak Hospital, told AFP 71 patients were brought in after the violence, with 10 to 12 of them still in hospital on Sunday evening.

One man with a fractured skull had undergone surgery and a woman sustained serious spinal injuries that are likely to leave her paralysed, the doctor said.

“The injuries are consistent with heavy blows with sticks,” the source said, asking not to be named.

Senior local police officer Aslam Khan told AFP 23 officers were injured “from stones, flower pots and fire extinguishers thrown at them by the people there”.

The saffron-robed Ramdev had piled pressure on the scandal-tainted government over corruption after beginning a fast to protest so-called “black money”, cash from bribes or other illegal transactions in overseas accounts.

He had demanded the government accept all of his demands to tackle the problem, including introducing the death penalty for corrupt officials and withdrawing large-denomination bank notes used in illicit cash deals.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s administration had attempted to talk him out of the “fast unto death”, nervous that his campaign could spiral into a mass challenge to the government’s authority.

Anger over corruption is high across the country after a string of high-profile scandals, including a telecoms licence scam that might have cost the country up to $39 billion and has seen a minister arrested.

Singh sent a succession of ministers to negotiate with Ramdev, leading to criticism from some commentators that the government was appeasing a man with views far outside the political mainstream.

The police raid on Sunday morning in full view of India’s media, which have been covering every twist in the protest, left some questioning the sudden change in tactics.

“It was badly mishandled and it will have a negative impact on the government,” M.J. Akbar, a columnist and political commentator as well as a former Congress party MP, told AFP.

“This smacks of incompetent governance and a complete absence of understanding of the political consequences,” he added.

A senior leader from the ruling Congress party, Digvijay Singh, was unrepentant, telling reporters that “the kind of treatment needed to be meted out to a fraud has been meted out to him”.

Ramdev is popular among millions of Indians who watch his daily televised yoga sessions and he has strong backing from the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“BJP activists will hold a 24-hour protest across the nation in towns and villages to protest what has happened,” BJP president Nitin Gadkari said in a hastily convened press conference.

The government said it would no longer discuss Ramdev’s demands on “black money” and said the police action had been an authorised with “100 percent unity in the government and the party.”