NEW DELHI, India, Dec.6: Reuters: About 80 people have been arrested since violent incidents around Sikh temples in yesterday in which at least six people were killed, police said today.

‘A senior police official said ‘Some arrests were preventive but many of those detained, including. ‘2 number of Sikhs, faced charges that included! Attempted murder, rioting, arson, assault and un law full assembly.

He said they were being interrogated to find out whether arms ‘were being stored in the temples a highly sensitive issue since the 1984 battle at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

‘The army, on full alert since last night, moved two columns in battle gear into tense areas of east and ‘West Delhi “to be closer to police Stations in case of any eventuality”, according to an official source.

Hundreds of armed police ringed the capitals three big Sikh ‘Gurdwaras (Temples) and maintained a strict curfew around them despite complaints from the Sikhs themselves.

By late today there had been no Reports of fresh outbreaks of the ‘communal rioting which has continued intermittently since Sunday’s massacre of 22 Hindu bus passengers in the Sikh dominated Punjab province.

Inside the Sisganj Temple in the Old Delhi, where police opened fire yesterday to stop Hindus hijacking a Sikh procession, Sikhs armed with swords and spears ‘waited in a virtual state of siege.

“It is four days we have been under curfew in this temple. We don’t know when it will end”, one of them told Reuters. “Of course ‘we are angry. A lot of people are suffering because they can’t come to our ceremonies.

“Sikhs are not afraid of the Hindus’, another spokesman said “If the Hindus hijack we will be brave and hijack them”.

Despite the tension around the temples, life continued normally in most of the city. Sikhs, who operate most of Delhi’s taxis, were still plying their trade,

‘The main opposition Janata Party demanded a judicial inquiry into yesterday’s killings details of which remain confused.

A police spokesman said there were six confirmed deaths, Three constables killed when a 14yearold Sikh youth roared out of one of the temples in a truck and ploughed into a group of policemen.

But eye witnesses said more people were killed when enraged police pulled the boy and others from the truck. Sikhs at the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara showed visitors pools of blood where they said two more people had died.

Janata President LK, Advani accused the authorities of being “ham handed and clumsy” in dealing with the situation in the Capital,

He told a news conference the government’s policy over the Punjab, where a minority is battling for an independent state, had been a total disaster.

Advani said the threat to national unity was far graver than it Was two years ago when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took office after his mother, Indira Gandhi, ‘was shot dead by her two bodyguards.

He said his party would present & no confidence motion against the Punjab state government, which rules with Gandhi’s backing, when the State Assembly session opens on December 15.

Janata wanted President’s rule imposed in Punjab “to protect it from internal disturbances”, Advani said.

Gandhi’s government has so far resisted calls to take over direct responsibility for Punjab. where more than 650 people have died in violent incidents so far this year.

Article extracted from this publication >> December 12, 1986