Riot police yesterday patrolled the streets of Delhi and the city’s leader called for a curfew following battles between Hindus and Muslims that claimed at least 20 lives.
The two days of sectarian violence — which had seen clashes between mobs armed with swords and guns — were the worst seen in Delhi in decades.
The clashes came amid worsening religious tensions following a citizenship law that critics say is part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday called for the army to be deployed and for a curfew to be imposed in flashpoint northeastern districts.
“Police, despite all its efforts, [are] unable to control situation and instil confidence,” Kejriwal wrote on Twitter. “Army [should] be called in and curfew imposed.”
The clashes began on Monday between people supporting and opposing the citizenship law, then descended into pitched battles between the mobs.
Twenty people died and nearly 200 were wounded in the first two days of violence, said the director of the hospital where people were taken.
Sixty people had suffered gunshot wounds, he said.
The area is home to mostly poorer economic migrants living in many shanty neighborhoods, and some fled yesterday ahead of more expected clashes.
“People are killing [each other]. Bullets are being fired here,” a tailor in the Jaffrabad area said, adding that he was returning home to his village in Uttar Pradesh state. “There is no work... It is better to leave than to stick around here. Why would we want to die here?”
People were yesterday cleaning out the blackened and trashed interior of a mosque in the Ashok Nagar area burned out during the violence.
A video circulated on social media showed men ripping off the loudspeaker on top of the mosque’s minaret, and placing a Hindu religious flag and an India national flag.
The new citizenship law has raised worries abroad that Modi wants to remould secular India into a Hindu nation, while marginalizing the nation’s 200 million Muslims, a claim he denies.
The law expedites the citizenship applications for minorities from India’s three Muslim-majority neighboring nations, but not if they are Muslim.
The flare-up in violence occurred as US President Donald Trump visited India and held talks with Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Trump left on Tuesday as scheduled and his visit was not visibly interrupted by the violence.
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