NEW DELHI: Women and men armed with truncheons and stones attacked police yesterday in an affluent New Delhi suburb where violent clashes between protesting Honda workers and police a day earlier reportedly injured 700 people.
The renewed violence came as India’s Parliament erupted in chaos, with some opposition members walking out and others angrily demanding that the government take action against police officers who sparked Monday’s clash.
Live television footage yesterday showed furious women chasing police officers and pounding them with canes near a government hospital in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon.
Men with stones swarmed the hospital, where many of the injured were being treated, after patients complained of getting no help. There was no immediate word on casualties or arrests.
Many of the protesters were relatives of those still missing after Monday’s violence, which erupted when about 1,000 angry Honda workers protested the dismissal of four colleagues in Gurgaon.
“I want to see my brother. I saw him on TV yesterday, he was one of the leaders. We don’t know what happened to him after that,” said Veermati. “I am furious. Nobody’s telling me where my brother is.”
The demonstrators on Monday hurled stones at police and set fire to a police jeep, and officers waded into the crowd while swinging batons, Haryana state Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said.
Hundreds of protesters were rounded up and forced to sit or lie on the ground in Gurgaon. Television footage showed police clubbing them with bamboo truncheons as workers pleaded and screamed. Busloads were taken away to police stations. It was unclear how the fighting started. Earlier video footage also showed workers attacking outnumbered police with wooden sticks, and one officer pleading with protesters as they hit him repeatedly.
“There was violence from both sides,” Hooda told reporters. “Hundreds, including many policemen, were injured.” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed ‘anguish’ over the incident and called for an independent investigation.
Yesterday, members of the opposition National Democratic Alliance walked out of the Lok Sabha, the powerful lower house of Parliament, in protest after Home Minister Shivraj Patil said only 92 workers and 35 police officers were injured in Monday’s brawl.
The figures were far lower than the 550 people reported by the Press Trust of India to have been admitted to hospital late on Monday.
Opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra accused police of inflicting “atrocities” against the workers while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed “deep anguish” over the violence.
“This is spine chilling. I could not have imagined that an incident like this could have happened in independent India,” said Nitish Kumar, an opposition leader.
Singh’s governing Congress Party, which relies heavily on support from communist parties closely associated with India’s labor unions, faced allies who expressed anger at Monday’s riot and blamed police.
“I want the police officers dismissed,” said Gurudas Dasgupta, a senior lawmaker from the Communist Party of India-Marxist “Even animals are not treated like this,” said Devendra Prasad Yadav, leader of ruling coalition member Rashtriya Janata Dal group.
“Cops go beserk, thrash workers black and blue,” said a front-page headline in The Times of India.
The workers were employed by Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India – a subsidiary of Japanese auto giant Honda Motor Co.
A Honda official said four workers were fired and 15 others were temporarily suspended on charges of insubordination a month ago.      – Agencies



photo: Policemen beat demonstrators with bamboo sticks during a violent demonstration in Gurgaon, a New Delhi suburb, yesterday. The arm of a demonstrator appears to be broken. Extreme right: Injured protesters lie in a hospital in Gurgaon.     – AFP/EPA