Ten die in Delhi’s night of rioting

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33527, 7 May 1974, Page 17

Ten die in Delhi’s night of rioting

(N .Z .P .A .-Reuter—Copy right) NEW DELHI, May 6. Old Delhi appeared quiet late last night after almost eight hours of frenzied fighting between Hindus and Moslems which left at least 10 people dead and more than 150 injured.

The district magistrate, Mr V. K. Kapoor, said at about midnight in the riot area that the situation seemed to be 1 under control. Almost 1000 men of the

para-military Border Security Force, in battle uniforms anil carrying automatic rifles, were patrolling the troubled area, which was put under curfew until tomorrow evening. The Army was standing by to move in at short notice.

Officials described the communal flare-up as the most serious in the capital in recent years and said that mobs used guns, rifles and acid bombs. More than 100 shops were burned down. Among the injured m the clashes which followed was Mr Ved Marwah, the Deputy Inspector Genera] of Police, who caught a spray of pellets on his neck. Officials said that the sporadic gun battle between snipers and policemen in the mosque area lasted for more than an hour.

The Delhi police, apparently helping out with labour trouble on the railways and elsewhere, were unable to mobilise enough men at short notice to control the situation. Officials said that the tiouble began with a quarrel between two people standing at a roadside stall near a mosque in the heavily populated and congested Sadar Bazaar area. Shots were said to have been fired from inside the mosque, parts of which were later set on fire. The same area of the old city, where most of the capital's Moslems live, was the scene of similar clashes in June last year, when one man was shot dead and 50 others were injured. I The police said late tonight that more than 50 people had been held and more arrests were likely. I .abour trouble Meanwhile, the leaders of India’s electricity workers called yesterday for militant demonstrations in support of railway employees who have threatened a nation-wide strike on Wednesday. The All-India Federation of Electricity Employees, in a statement in Madras, said that the Government’s arrest of rail union leaders showed what the Government had in mind for other workers.