THREE HOURS BATTLE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 23 June 1930, Page 5

THREE HOURS BATTLE.

WILD SCENES AT BOMBAY.

OVER FIVE HUNDRED INJURED.

Pleas Association- Electric Telegraph-Copyrij

(Received Monday, 9.10 a.m.)

DELHI, Sunday

Over five hundred were injured in a three hours’ battle at Bombay yesterday between mounted and foot police and Congress volunteers, who massed in the vicinity of the Esplanade Maidan (a large open space in the centre of the city), in contravention of the magistrate’s order banning a rally there. Five hundred police, armed with lathes or long 'bamboo poles, repeatedly charged the crowd, numbering fifteen thousand.

Early in the morning, in defiance of a police order, Congress workers and the "National Militia,” a Nationalist organisation, assembled at the Esplanade Maidan for inspection by the Pundit Motilal Nhru, president of the National Congress.

The police had a very difficult task to disperse the Sikh volunteers, as they sheltered behind women Nationalists.

Trade in Bombay is completely at a standstill, causing dismay to many Indian merchants, who countenanced the Congress campaign and calculated on moking a profit from the boycott of British goods. Eurpean and Indian business interests, while adverse to a declaration of martial law, aro urging the necessity for the reassertion of authority. The growth of the anarchial movement in several centres throughout India is evidenced by further bomb outrages yesterday at Barisal, in Bengal, and New Delhi.