India’s new P.M. orders crackdown

Press, 5 November 1984, Page 1

India’s new P.M. orders crackdown

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The death toll in India rose yesterday in four days of violence sparked by the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi. Her son, Rajiv, who is India’s new Prime Minister, ordered another crackdown on rioters after lighting his mother’s funeral pyre. As it took hold New Delhi showed signs of returning to normal. People slowly returned to. the streets, auto rickshaws searched for customers, and even the city’s golf course reopened. The Press Trust of India reported that about 800 people had died in HinduSikh fighting, mostly in New Delhi. A Government statement said that the Home Secretary, Mr M. M. K. Wali, had replaced Mr P. G. Gavai as Delhi’s LieutenantGovernor, the city’s top civilian administrator. It said Mr Gavai had gone on leave. More than a million people and the leaders of 94 nations attended Mrs Gandhi’s funeral in New Delhi on Saturday in a solemn Hindu ceremony, while thousands of onlookers wept openly. After the funeral, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said that the atmosphere had been restrained and low key “which hopefully is the climate the country will grasp.”

More than 2000 have been injured and at least 10,000 arrested since Mrs_ Gandhi was shot dead by two Sikh bodyguards last Wednesday, according to the Press Trust of India.

The agency said that the toll in the central state of Madhya Pradesh had reached 76, with more deaths reported in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Haryana as well as in New Delhi.

Mr Gandhi has twice visited the worst affected parts of the capital, where at least 500 have died, and ordered an increase in security force deployment. In Kanpur, a major industrial city in Uttar Pradesh, 10,000 Sikhs have been moved away to six camps, P.T.I. reported. Special police squads had recovered looted property worth more than 5 million rupees ($820,000) which would be returned to the original owners, said P.T.I. It quoted officials in the Madhya Pradesh state capital, Bhopal, as saying that 38 places in the state were under curfew. In Raipur, one boy was killed and three police injured in clashes after a group set fire to effigies of Mrs Gandhi’s assassins. The British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, told reporters that the British police had not found enough evidence to prosecute the

exiled Sikh leader, Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan, who called recently in Britain for the death of Mrs Gandhi. Dr Chauhan said in London on Saturday that Mr Gandhi would suffer the same fate as his mother.

During his two-day stay in New Delhi, Mr Lange had meetings with other leaders visiting India for the funeral, including the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Bowen, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Nakasone.

During their meeting on Saturday, Mr Lange invited Mr Nakasone to visit New Zealand. Mr Nakasone may do so before the middle of next year. ■