India citizenship riots leave 27 dead
▶ Prime Minister Modi urges calm as the leader of New Delhi calls for the army to patrol the streets
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for calm yesterday, saying peace and harmony were central to Indians’ ethos
Patients on stretchers were crammed into the emergency room, as injured people poured into a public hospital after three days of riots between Hindus and Muslims left at least 27 dead.
The clashes coincided with US President Donald Trump’s visit to India. Nearly 200 were injured, both Hindus and Muslims, in the worst communal violence in the Indian capital in decades.
Hindu and Muslim groups have been clashing over a new citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalisation for foreign-born religious minorities of all major faiths in South Asia except Islam. The government has now banned public assembly in the affected areas.
While riots wracked northeast New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a lavish reception for Mr Trump, including a rally in his home state of Gujarat attended by more than 100,000 people before signing an agreement to spend $3 billion (Dh11.02bn) on American military helicopters. Mr Trump left India late on Tuesday evening.
New Delhi’s top elected official, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, called for Mr Modi’s home minister, Amit Shah, to send the army to areas in a north-east corner of the sprawling capital affected by the riots.
Police said that the situation was tense but under control. Schools remained closed.
In his first comments on the matter this week, Mr Modi called for calm yesterday, saying “peace and harmony are central to our ethos”.
Yesterday, victims’ relatives stood outside the mortuary, waiting for hospital authorities to release the bodies after post-mortem examinations. Rahul Solanki, 26, a Hindu, died from a gunshot wound, according to his family. His younger brother, Rohit Solanki, said he was shot walking to a shop to buy milk.
The corridors of the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital at New Delhi’s eastern border are often crowded, but yesterday hundreds thronged its wards as doctors worked through the night to treat injuries. Mohammad Akram watched as his 17-year-old son was wheeled out of an operating theatre after surgery for a bullet wound in his chest. The teenager said he was shot on his family’s apartment terrace as he watched Hindu mobs enter his neighbourhood.
New patients continued to be carried into the hospital on stretchers. Those with head injuries were wheeled to the overcrowded emergency room.
Mohammad Akbar made it to the hospital with his head bleeding profusely after he was attacked early yesterday.
Mr Akbar, who is a Muslim, said a crowd forced him to chant the Hanuman chalisa, a Hindu devotional hymn.
“They pounced on me after and started beating me. One person hit me on the head with an axe,” Mr Akbar said.
He was one of the lucky ones. Mr Akbar found a vehicle to take him to the hospital, about 6 kilometres away. Others waited, sometimes in vain, for ambulances that struggled to reach injured people on roads in areas the rioters were not allowing anyone to enter, said Shaleen Mitra, an adviser to Delhi’s Health Minister Satyender Jain.
Mr Mitra said police also blocked ambulances from transferring the injured from an overcrowded private hospital in Mustafabad, a Muslim-majority area, to the public Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital.
“The police told healthcare workers that they would not be able to protect them from the rioters,” Mr Mitra said.
Delhi High Court judges met for a midnight hearing and ordered police to take away the injured. Relatives of Muslim victims accused the police of standing by as the Hindu mobs set fire to buildings and beat people. How the violence began, and who was to blame, remained unclear.