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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Tension mounts in riot-hit Gopalgarh

Tension mounts in riot-hit Gopalgarh

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published Published on Sep 20, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 20, 2011

-The Hindu

 

Autopsies not completed as victims' relatives demand calling specialists from AIIMS in Delhi

Tension in the violence-hit Gopalgarh town of Bharatpur district escalated on Monday with a five-member medical team from Jaipur failing to conduct autopsies on five of the eight victims of this past Wednesday's clash following objections raised by their kin. The bodies are kept in the mortuary at Bharatpur Government Hospital.

State Chief Secretary S. Ahmed had announced on Sunday that the families of victims had agreed to post-mortem and burial of bodies. While the autopsies of two bodies had been conducted earlier, the third post-mortem was done by the doctors of Sawai Man Singh Hospital of Jaipur on Sunday at Bharatpur.

The remaining five autopsies could not be done as the relatives of the deceased demanded calling specialists from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and made their consent subject to a “collective decision” to be taken at a Meo Mahapanchayat in the region in a day or two.

Though curfew in the eastern Rajasthan town was relaxed for five hours for the third consecutive day, the district administration decided to extend it till Tuesday evening in view of the continuing tension. According to Bharatpur Collector Gaurav Goyal, curfew would continue in five police station areas of Kaman and Pahari tehsils. The relaxation period might be extended by an hour on Tuesday, he said.

Amid the deadlock over post-mortem of bodies and allegations of indiscriminate firing by the police at Jama Masjid, a four-member delegation of the All-India Congress Committee visited Gopalgarh on Monday to take stock of the situation. The delegation comprised Members of Parliament Rashid Alvi, Dipendra Hooda, Vijay Bahuguna and Viplav Thakur. PCC president Chandrabhan, who accompanied the delegation, said the violent confrontation in the town could have been avoided if the administration had remained “more alert” and taken steps to settle the original dispute between Meo Muslims and Gujjars over a piece of land.

People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), which sent a fact-finding team to Gopalgarh over the weekend, said the facts emerging from the town were pointing towards “collusion between the police, an aggressive section of the Gujjar community and some local leaders of Hindu outfits”.

PUCL general secretary Kavita Srivastava said the mosque bore evidence of “extensive vandalism”, which suggested that the place of worship had been “captured” by a section of the Gujjar community in complicity with the police. The bodies of victims were burnt and mutilated ostensibly to destroy the evidence of bullet and other injuries, she added.

The PUCL rubbished the State Government's claim that the policemen neither resorted to firing on people praying in the mosque nor did they join the violent crowd of Gujjars. “There are widespread allegations that firearms from the police station's armoury were taken and used by some elements from the Gujjar community,” said Ms. Srivastava.

A preliminary report released by PUCL states that there is a strong belief among Meos that the then District Magistrate, Krishna Kunal, was pressured into ordering firing by the self-styled Hindu leaders. “If the police were [indeed] acting neutrally, the preponderance of Muslims among the dead and the injured is intriguing,” it said.

Samagra Seva Sangh president Sawai Singh – a member of the PUCL team – said there were still several reports of missing persons which needed to be verified. The post-mortem of bodies of the deceased should be done in a credible manner by an independent panel of doctors in view of allegations that they were killed in the police firing, he said.

“If the police were acting neutrally, the preponderance of Muslims among the dead is intriguing”


The Hindu, 20 September, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2469130.ece


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