State takes tough action

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 6

State takes tough action

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The Government of India's Western Gujarat state said yesterday it would enforce a tough antiterrorist act from today to curb growing violence which has claimed the lives of two more people. The Press Trust of India news agency said one person was killed in a bomb blast and another was stabbed to death in Ahmedabad yesterday, the state’s largest city. The two deaths raised the toll in six consecutive days of street battles in Ahmedabad to at least 35. The continued violence came after a day-long strike called by rebel students defying a truce signed last week between the state Government and leaders of a protest campaign against an official minorities policy. P.T.I. said rebel leaders told a meeting in the Gujarat port of Surat that they would start a fresh protest campaign this week. Gujarat's chief Minister, Mr Amarsinh Chaudhary, told the State Assembly that he was enforcing the antiterrorist act which lays down the death penalty for extremist acts that kill and gives the Government powers to tap telephones, search houses and hold secret trials. The act was passed in May after a Sikh extremist bombing blitz in Delhi and northern India. It requires a special Government notification to be enforced in a particular area and is already in force in the northern state of Punjab where extremists are fighting for a separate Sikh nation.