200 injured as anti- Hindi crowds clash with police in Bangalore

Bangalore: About 200 persons, including 121 police personnel, were injured, some of them seriously, when police fired nearly a dozen rounds and burst 200 rounds of tear gas shells to disperse stone- pelting hostile crowds, mostly students in the precincts of Bangalore University today. The injured include two senior Deputy Commissioners of Police and a number of students. The police resorted to firing when the lathi- charge and the firing of tear- gas shells against a section of the unruly crowd proved futile. While ViceChancellor V. K. Gokak raised strong objection to police entering the University campus to chase away the crowd, Deputy Commissioner of Police B. N. Garudachar told UNI that his men did only their duty in tackling the situation when it got out of control. What appeared to be a peaceful ‘ protest day’ by University students against Hindi, suddenly turned into a hostile one when outsiders are alleged to have joined the student demonstrators. Some of the Government- owned city transport buses were badly damaged as a result of stone- throwing. The trouble started by about 11 a. m. when a crowd of about 1,000 students from inside the Central College compound started flinging stones and damaging the cars and auto- rickshaws passing by.

The situation getting out of control, the police first lathi- charged and later burst about 100 tear- gas shells. Both measures proving inadequate ten rounds of rifle shots were fired.

A senior police officer was injured in the stonethrowing.

When the agitators were cleared out of the Central College, the trouble started from the University campus.

Police did not enter the campus until about 2.30 p. m. The students collected in small numbers in the campus were throwing stones intermittently.