From: kurdikar@glycol.ecn.purdue.edu (Dev)
Subject: Re: Communal bug bites the Indian police.
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 18:09:34 GMT

In article <1jsuk6INNl54@tamsun.tamu.edu> gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu (Gopal Agrawal) writes:
>Hi Everybody,
>
>Just got back from India (Bombay) yesterday.  Lot's of heated discussion 
>going on here. So I just wanted to add in my little bit of what's happening 
>in India. Perhaps all this is old stuff already. Anyway...
>
>	Regarding the police firing incident, most of the people I met 
>are of the opinion that the muslim mob did indeed break the curfew rules 
>and it seems they killed 3-4 police men in the process.  The police went 
>berserk and started shooting blindly into the muslim dominated slum areas.
>In the process, innocent muslims (and very few hindus, if at all) were killed  
>since the walls of their houses were no match for the police bullets. The 
>actual goons, as expected, are still out there very much alive and looking 
>for action. 
>
>At the moment, the estate owners, with the help of both hindu and muslim
>goons have cleared off almost more than 50% of the Dharavi Slum area. 
>Money changes hands openly in the streets just before some area is torched.
>It's basically a mop-up operation by the land-lords and religion has 
>nothing to do whatsoever with whatever is going on. 
>
>regards,
>--   
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>   / __   /   /  /   /  /   /  /   | (o)(o)  REAL & IMAGINARY PARTS.
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>
>


While I was in Bombay [few days back] there was a furore over the number of
Muslims killed by the police after the DEC 6 RIOTS, not the Jan 8 riots. Most
of the police firing occurred in North Bombay, an area whose police chief is
Addl. Commr. A.A.Khan.  He has been perhaps the most vocal defender of the
police firings, though he himself is a member of the ethnic minority.  Also,
there was a furore over the number of fatalities in the police firing [132
out of the total 202 killed in the Dec 6 riots].  One claim was that the
police fired to kill [some say that the police aimed at the looter's heads].  

Anyone who has seen the rifles that the police use
[.303 Enfields, single shot, World war II relics] will find that claim hard to
believe.  with a rifle of that sort, it would be surprising if the policeman
could aim at a person's head and actually hit it from a distance of 50 m.
Anyone who has done some target shooting will agree with me on this.  Sad, but
true.


Anyway, the outcome of all this furore was that the Police Commr/State Govt
issued orders that henceforth only the Inspector-in-charge of a particular
area could issue orders to shoot.  Hence, when the rioting broke out on Jan 7,
the inspector-in-charge of an area could not be at the site of 10 incidents at
the same time and could not issue shoot orders.  The police did not open fire
until the riots broke out all over Bombay.  Due to all the pressure on the
police that groups like Amnesty Intl', and various human right orgs brought,
the police did not use force as they had used after the dec 6 tragedy.

The outcome: 700 people dead [most stabbed, others burnt] in 7 days [Jan 7 -
14]; not to mention the property damage, and economic loss of the nation.