Indian Army guards boats from looters

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 9

Indian Army guards boats from looters

NZPA New Delhi Armed guards have been placed on boats ferrying food supplies into flood-hit eastern India after reports of looting and clashes among villagers desperate for relief aid. The monsoon floods have swamped vast areas of northern and eastern India in the last 11 days, drowning more than 300 people and affecting the lives of over 30 million villagers whose land has been inundated.

Army helicopters and motor boats have been rushing in tonnes of food and medicines every day for the last week to those stranded by the floods. But fresh rains and swift-moving currents have made it difficult to reach some of thb marooned. The Press Trust of India

reported from Bhubaneswar, the capital of the eastern state of Orissa, that one group of 500 people had been without food for four days. The "Indian Express.” in a front-page report from the city, said yesterday that villagers reaching safer ground had reported the looting of food grains from Government stocks in the devastated Cutlack and Puri districts of Orissa. The paper said every Army boat had been provided with an armed policeman to control crowds. In one district a local mayor had been mobbed by an angry crowd and the food stocks under his charge looted. The Chief Minister of the state, Mr J. B. Patnaik, has called for the people’s cooperation.