Violence erupts again

Press, 7 November 1984, Page 6

Violence erupts again

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi A soldier and two other people were killed when fresh feuding erupted in New Delhi and a central Indian town in spite of Rajiv Gandhi’s drive to restore peace in the country. After two days of calm, the Press Trust of India said that the deaths occurred in an exchange of shooting on Monday night when troops moved in to stop renewed looting and arson in the centre of the sprawling capital of 7 million people. The death toll in New Delhi had earlier risen to 471 with the death of a person during police firing on Monday and recovery of 12 more bodies from the remains of gutted houses and shops. The P.T.I. said that police opened fire in self-defence at the town of Damoh, in central Madhya Pradesh state, when gunmen on a

roof-top shot at an angry crowd. An indefinite curfew was put on the town but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

More than 900 people were reported to have died throughout India in an antiSikh rampage triggered by the assassination of Indira Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards last Wednesday. The P.T.I. quoted police as saying that 2266 people had been arrested on charges of arson, looting and defying a ban on public gatherings in New Delhi while looted property worth $1,200,000 had been recovered.

The Government of Mr Rajiv Gandhi has launched a peace drive, distributing emergency food supplies to thousands of refugees sheltering in camps and ensuring protection for Sikhs who fled the violence.

India’s stock exchanges reopened on Monday and a

Government directive to public financial institutions to buy shares helped prevent sharp falls in share prices.

Shops were open and many people, including Sikhs, returned to work. The vice-chief of Army Staff Lieutenant-General G. S. Rawat, said before the upsurge in violence On Monday night that Delhi was returning to normal while Punjab state, where most Sikhs live, was tense but peaceful.

Troops on India’s border with Pakistan were on alert to intercept Sikh extremists who might try to enter India, he said.

Mass arrests have been made in northern Uttar Pradesh state, one of the worst-hit areas outside the capital, where 99 people died during the unrest. In Punjab, the focus of a guerrilla campaign for an independent Sikh nation, the

State Governor, Mr K. T. Satarawala, said that law and order would be maintained at all cost. The P.T.I. quoted him as saying that security forces would deal ruthlessly with what he called secessionist elements. Mrs Gandhi’s assassination was apparently in retaliation for her decision to order the Army into Punjab in a bid to quell Sikh separatists. The Indian leader’s body was cremated in New Delhi on Saturday and the P.T.I. said that the Indian Air Force would start flying some of the 40 urns containing her ashes to several cities so that people could pay their last respects. Some urns have already left Delhi on board special trains for different parts of the country. The remains will be scattered over the snow-clad Himalayas on Sunday.