NEW DELHI – On Friday, Indian police stated that hundreds of people had been detained and they were maintaining a heavy presence in northeast New Delhi.
This comes just a few days after India’s worst bout of sectarian violence that New Delhi has seen in decades.
So far, around 38 lives have been claimed in the Hindu-Muslim violence amid the mounting international criticism that the Indian authorities face for failing to protect minority Muslims.
Media believe that the death toll is likely to rise.
Delhi police spokesman M.S. Randhawa claimed that evidence was being collected by the police and that on reviewing video footage of the violence, over 600 people were detained.
Randhawa believes that the detentions were important to control the situation.
The clashes started off in December over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s introduction of a new Indian Citizenship path for six religious groups from neighbouring countries which did not include Muslims.
The law seems to be discriminatory against Muslims and comes, in addition, to measures like the withdrawal of autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir which is a Muslim-dominated area which deepened the disquiet of the future of the 200 million Muslims in the “secular” world’s largest democratic country India.
Government critics blamed the protests from this week on the BJP members who lost the recent local Delhi elections while the allegations have been denied by Modi’s party.
It soon manifested as street battles between Muslim and Hindu groups as police watched on and remained largely ineffective in putting an end to the violence.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.
