Four dead in religious riots over Amarnath trust land

Enlarge Photo An activist from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), shouts slogans during a protest in Agartala... Slideshow: Day in pics: July 3 2008

Thu, Jul 3 09:16 PM

BHOPAL (Reuters) - A scattered strike over the transfer of forest land to the Amarnath shrine trust turned violent in central India on Thursday, with four people killed and dozens injured in religious clashes, police said.

Strike supporters shut down transport and businesses in several states, as protesters blocked roads, smashed vehicles and stopped trains.

They were protesting against the government of Jammu and Kashmir for reversing a decision to transfer forest land to the shrine trust in the Muslim-majority part of the state.

The government was forced to back down after Muslim protesters shut down Kashmir last week over the transfer of land, a move that has angered thousands of Hindus in India.

On Thursday, authorities imposed curfew in Indore, a town in Madhya Pradesh, where four people, including two Muslim residents were killed when Hindu groups clashed with them, forcing police to open fire and lob tear gas shells.

In Indore, police used loudspeakers to warn both communities to stay inside their homes and had detained dozens of people for rioting, a senior officer said.

A Muslim trader was seriously injured after he set himself on fire when a Hindu mob beat him up and ransacked his shop in a remote town in the state, police said.

Hindu protesters have demanded that land be allotted to Hindus for building temporary shelters built for pilgrims who visit Amarnath cave in Kashmir every year to pray by an ice stalagmite considered holy.

In Bihar, supporters of the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who called the one-day strike, blocked trains and damaged vehicles in Patna.

Carrying party flags and wearing saffron turbans, Hindu protesters shouted "Kashmir Hamara hai" (Kashmir is ours) as they forced traders to close shops.

OPPOSITION

The BJP, which is India's main opposition party, supports the demand for temporary shelters.

"The response to the strike shows the anger of the people against the government's attack on secular fabric of the country," Prakash Javdekar, a senior BJP leader, told Reuters in New Delhi. "They surrendered meekly under pressure from separatists."

But Gujarat, one of BJP's most important states, refused to join the protest. Officials said they needed to focus on a possible early general election.

Authorities in Jammu, the part of Kashmir where Hindus are a majority, imposed a curfew for the second day in a row, forcing residents to stay indoors.

"We have not yet taken any decision on relaxing it," a police spokesman said.

The impact of the strike was also felt in some northern Indian states, where protesters clashed with police and threw stones at passing vehicles.

There was no impact of the strike in New Delhi.

Over 100 protesters were held in Hyderabad, police said, but in India's Information Technology (IT) hub, Bangalore, life was normal.

"It is business as usual, we are not off," a spokeswoman for Infosys, India's top software company, told Reuters. Bangalore is home to more than 1,500 IT companies.

In Mumbai, hundreds of protesters blocked traffic on the highway from the domestic airport for more than half-an-hour, officials said.

In Madhya Pradesh and Maoist-dominated Chhattisgarh, activists of conservative Hindu groups patrolled streets with bamboo canes to enforce a total strike.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in Mumbai, Ashok Pahalwan in Jammu and Shafeeq Mohammed in Hyderabad)

(For the latest Reuters news on India see: http://in.reuters.com , for blogs see http://blogs.reuters.com/in/)

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