1,000 held, 100 hurt in anti-police riots in India
PATNA, Jan 3: More than 1,000 people were arrested and more than 100, including a number of politicians, were injured in Bihar in Friday in violent protests against an alleged killing of three men by police.
Police fired several hundred rounds in the air and also lobbed teargas shells to control crowds at a number of places in the state - mainly in the capital Patna - where a strike was called to protest against the killings on Saturday.
Police, who have denied any wrongdoing in the killings, said 100 people were injured, including 50 policemen who were pelted with stones by protesters standing on rooftops. But opposition BJP leaders, who were supporting the strike, said all 100 injured were its activists and that they were hurt by the police. The injured included state party leader Shushil Modi, former health minister C.P. Thakur and two legislators, the BJP said.
Two government offices were set on fire, more than a dozen vehicles were burnt, including two buses, and a police outpost at Dumra in Patna was attacked by the mob.
In Ara town, 75 kilometres from Patna, an angry mob torched a police jeep, injuring the police driver.
Demonstrators also set a market building on fire and attacked an office of the water board in Patna.
An employee of the state government office confirmed a mob of up to 50 people stormed it and tried to set it on fire.
"Forty to fifty persons armed with sticks carrying petrol in bottles entered the office around noon and attempted to torch the office," said N.K. Singh.
Vehicles were off the streets and many people stayed indoors during the strike, called by youth organisations as well as opposition parties.
Indian Railways took the unprecedented step of stopping 200 trains for 12 hours in the state, fearing the worst after a similar strike on Tuesday ended with 50 people injured and 500 arrested.
Some 2,000 riot police and 10,000 state police were deployed in Patna ahead of Friday's strike, a police spokesman said.
The three men were killed Saturday when police opened fire "during an encounter with robbers", according to a spokesman. Police have denied the officers acted illegally.
The victims' families, however, say they were not robbers and that the police shot them in "cold blood" during a "fake encounter".
One of the five policemen involved in the incident has been arrested and jailed. A search is on to find the missing four and the state government has launched a high-level inquiry.-AFP
