India News
Army called out to control rioters in India's Kolkata
By DPA
Nov 21, 2007, 14:13 GMT

New Delhi - Indian army soldiers marched through the streets of the eastern metropolis of Kolkata Wednesday in an effort to restore peace in pockets of the city that saw rioting and clashes earlier in the day between Muslim protestors and the police.

A group known as the All India Minority Forum (AIMF), an umbrella organization of several small Islamic organizations and some Buddhist groups, had called for a three-hour roadblock demanding that an Indian visa granted to Bangladeshi author, feminist and human rights activist Taslima Nasreen be revoked.

They were also protesting against the West Bengal state government's handling of the situation in Nandigram, where villagers have been opposing plans to build an industrial hub. Kolkata is capital of West Bengal.

AIMF members set up roadblocks on key arteries in central Kolkata during peak morning traffic hours. When the police tried to remove the blockades, the protestors, mostly Muslims, hurled stones and glass bottles, broke windows of cars and set some vehicles on fire, the police said.

An uneasy calm returned to the violence-hit pockets of the city late in the afternoon as 10 columns of soldiers - 160 men - marched through the riot-hit areas.

The area has several schools and these were closed early and the children evacuated safely, a senior official at the city's police control room said. All commercial establishments and offices in the area also closed down.

'The situation is still tense but under control,' the police official said. He said several people, both policemen and protestors, had been injured, but added that the numbers had not yet been collated. 'We are still tackling the situation,' he said. Several rioters had been taken into custody.

Idris Ali, president of the Kolkata-based AIMF, said his organization had planned a peaceful protest but things had gone out of hand. 'Outside elements had a hand in this rioting,' he was quoted as saying. The AIMF has staged protest marches in the past but they have always been peaceful, he said.

A worried state government was considering imposing curfew at night in the riot-hit areas given the communal tinge to the protests, NDTV reported. Ali said Nasreen, who now resides in Kolkata, should be made to leave as her writings had hurt the sentiments of Muslims.

Nasreen is in self-imposed exile from Bangladesh, where fundamentalist Islamic groups issued a fatwa against her for alleged blasphemous writings, some of which are critical of Islam. She writes in Bengali, the mother-tongue of Bangladeshis as well as the people of West Bengal.

The other issue raised by the AIMF - Nandigram - has been at the centre of several protest rallies against the government in recent days. The cluster of villages, 140 kilometres south of Kolkata, has seen months of strife between villagers opposing and supporting a proposed industrial hub, which the government announced it was shelving earlier this year.

Villagers supporting West Bengal's ruling left coalition government were pushed out of the area in 2006 by anti-land acquisition activists who were supported by local opposition parties, Maoist rebel groups and Muslim organizations like the AIMF.

Communist cadres forced their way back into the village earlier this month amid allegations of looting, arson, rape and killings with the police choosing not to intervene in an action that was orchestrated by the government, according to the opposition.

More than 30 people have been killed in the violence at Nandigram so far and the AIMF was protesting the state's handling of the situation.