HEAVY CASUALTIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26413, 18 March 1947, Page 5

HEAVY CASUALTIES

FIGHTING IN PUNJAB TROOPS DISPERSE CROWDS Rec. 8 p.m. NEW DELHI. Mar. 16. Forty-seven Hindus and Sikhs were killed and three were wounded in Chaijan village, 80 miles east of Peshawar, says an official announcement from Peshawar. The authorities evacuated 1500 villagers to Haripur. In Peshawar city itself a Hindu was stabbed. A curfew has now been enforced.

The Exchange Telegraph correspondent in a delayed despatch from Peshawar says an iron curtain of secret

censorship has surrounded Peshawar and has not yet been entirely lifted. The correspondent’s l messages yesterday were stopped £s “objectionable.” Most of the Punjab trouble areas are now peaceful, but communal rioting continues in the hill district in Northwest Punjab. It is officially stated that troops opened fire to disperse a crowd assemblihg for an attack on the village of. Adhwal, in the Attack district. Moslems looted two villages near Pindi Gheb, 60 miles south-west of Rawalpindi, and heavy casualties were reported in the village of Nullah, where over 50 houses were burned. Hindus have evacuated the land and villages in the neighbourhood of Pindi Gheb.

DR JINNAH INTERVENES

Rec. 0.20 a.m. LONDON, Mar. 17. Miam Mumta Daultana, general secretary of the Punjab Moslem League, told Reuter’s Bombay correspondent that he was taking back to Lahore a directive from Dr 'Jinnah, president of the Indian Moslem League, calling on all Moslems in the Punjab to assist in restoring order and give unstinted cooperation to the administration. He added that it was the sacred duty of the Punjab Moslems to protect minorities.