Serious Disorders Continue In India

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 March 1947, Page 7

Serious Disorders Continue In India

(Rec. 11 a.m.) NEW DELHI, March 16. Forty-seven Hindus and Sikhs were killed and three wounded in Chaijen village, 80 miles east of Peshawar, says an official announcement from Peshawar. The authorities evacuated 1500 villagers to Haripur. Ninety Hindus and Sikhs were forcibly converted at two villages near Peshawar.

In Peshawar city itself, a Hindu was stabbed. A curfew has now been enforced. The Exchange Telegraph correspondent, in a delayed dispatch from Peshawar, says that an iron curtain of secret censorship has surrounded Peshawar and has not yet been entirely lifted. The correspondent’s messages yesterday were stopped as “objectionable.” “Extremely Serious” It is officially stated that troops opened fire to disperse a crowd assembling fof an attack on the village of Adhwel in the Attock district. Moslems looted two villages near Pindi Gheb, 60 miles south-west of Rawalpindi, and heavy casualties are reported at the village of Nullah, where over 50 houses were burned. Hindus have evacuated the land and villages in the neighbourhood of Pindi Gheb. The situation in some of the Punjab border areas is “extremely serious,” according to an official announcement. It is officially announced that communal riot casualties in the Punjab to date are 1036 killed and 1110 seriously injured. The Vice-President of the interim Government (Pandit Nehru) arrived at Lahore and conferred with the Governor of the Punjab (Sir Evan Jenkins) before beginning a tour -of the riot centres in the punjab and the North-west Province. Tomorrow he will visit Rawalpindi, where the

situation is described as extremely serious, and then Ultan and Amritsar on the following days.

i Sikh and Congress leaders are accompanying Pandit Nehru; who is reported to have declined an offer by Punjab Moslem- League leaders also to accompany him. j 1500 Killed I In Peshawar 1500 persons have I been’ killed as the. result of clashes 'between Moslems on one side and Sikhs and Hindus on the other. One ■ thousand members of the Moslem I League have been detained for tabling part in the civil disobedience ■ campaign, which has spread from the ■Punjab. I It is officially announced in Lahore that 250 were killed and 800 houses [destroyed by fire during the recent I communal rioting in Multan. Fortyseven villages beyond Multan are still burning and the damage is estimated at £lOO,OOO. " Troops arrived in time to rescue 48 of 49 persons stabbed in Bunna, and a military' column has been sent ‘there. I Forty men armed with axes ana I lathis burned down a factory at iMoghalpura, five miles from Lahore, ‘causing damage estimated at £15,400. False Rumours Bls med The Punjab Government blames the spreading of false rumours for the continuance of the disorders. A curfew was proclaimed at Benares after cb'mmunal rioters fatally stabbed two persons within an hour of the earlier 24-hour curifew being lifted. Fifteen persons 'have died in rioting in Benares since [the evening of March 13. “A 24-hour curfew was imposea after renewed Hindu-Moslem rioting ion Friday morning in which two 'were killed and three injured,” says I Reuter’s correspondent at Benares. “Total casualties since Thursday night are now nine killed and 14 injured.”