Police probe Twitter claim over fire at Rohingya camp

NEW DELHI: Indian police are investigating a ire that destroyed a Rohingya Muslim settlement in New Delhi last weekend after a Twitter user claimed responsibility for setting the blaze.

About40,000r oh ingyaf rom myanmar have settled in India in recent years after leeing violence, persecution and poverty at home.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken a tough stance on them since coming to power in 2014, calling them a security threat who should be deported.

The ire started early on Sunday and engulfed the shantytown, forcing its 226 residents to lee. No one was hurt but many of the Rohingya lost UN refugee documents.

It was the fourth ire in the settlement in six years and police said they were investigating its cause and the claim of responsibility.

“This is an open-ended investigation and we are looking into the Twitter matter,” Chinmoy Biswal, a deputy commissioner of police, told Reuters.

“We are trying to ind out more.” Delhi lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Thursday iled a complaint asking police to investigate the Twitter user who claimed responsibility for torching the houses of the “terrorists”.

The tweet was later deleted. Rohingya in India live mainly in Jammu, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi in the north, Hyderabad in the south, and Rajasthan in the west.

They face suspicion and resentment from many Indians at a time of simmering tension between some members of India’s majority Hindu community and its Muslim minority.

About 700,000 Rohingya have led from Myanmar to Bangladesh since a Myanmar military crack down in response to Rohingya militant attacks last August.