NEW DELHI, India, July 9, Reuter: Gurkha troops were called in today after angry Hindus burned and stoned Sikh homes and a temple during a strike in New Delhi against the massacres of 72 Hindu bus passengers by unknown gunmen.

Police said they fired tear gas to disperse about 200 youths who attacked two Sikh houses and a shop, and tried to set fire to a small temple and several vehicles in West Delhi.

The crack Gurkha soldiers were on alert to help police who clamped an indefinite curfew on two residential areas and arrested 50 protesters. No casualties were reported.

The army has already been called out in several places in north India to help police quell a growing anti-Sikh backlash which has claimed at least 10 lives.

Police said the capital was tense but that the violence was restricted to a small area of the city of seven million inhabitants.

Shopkeepers earlier downed shutters and buses and taxis kept off the largely deserted! Streets as members of the Hindu revivalist Bharatya Janata Party (BJP), some armed with staves, toured the capital urging people to observe the strike.

The Gurkhas stood by in police station compounds around Delhi ready to assist police in areas made tense by the bus killings. The worst bloodshed by Sikh militants campaigning for a separate state in India.

Police said they fired 19 tear gas shells to disperse the crowd armed with sticks and rocks. It was worst anti-Sikh rioting in Delhi since Hindus sacked Sikh homes last December, also after a bus massacre in Punjab.

“There is anger in Delhi because of the unfortunate happenings in Haryana”, the city’s Lieutenant Governor H.L. Kapoor told Reuters.

During general strikes yesterday in neighboring states Hindu protesters also attacked Sikhs and burned their shops.

Four Sikhs and a Hindu were killed in Haryana where 32 Hindus were shot by Sikh gunmen in attacks on two buses on Tuesday night, police said.

A Sikh man was stabbed to death in East Delhi, the scene of widespread killings of Sikhs after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

Four Sikhs were killed in Rishikesa, a Hindu pilgrimage town on the river Ganges in Uttar Pradesh that was the destination of a bus ambushed on Monday night when 38 Hindus were gunned down. Troops today marched through the town where several Sikh shops and a temple were set on fire yesterday. Police described much of north India as very tense after graphic accounts and gory newspaper photographs of the ambushes appear Ed. At least 570 people have been killed in Sikh violence so far this year compared with 640 in the whole of 1986.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took direct control of Sikh majority Punjab on May 11 when he sacked the State’s moderate Sikh government for failing to main tam law and order.

Since then, more than 70,000 police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in Punjab.

In Haryana, troops in battle dress paraded for the second day running in eight towns where angry crowds rampaged through the streets yesterday attacking and ambushing Sikhs.

In a rare frontage editorial’ the respected Times of India newspaper said that through the killing of Hindus, militants were waging war on the Indian State itself.

“Free India has never been in greater peril”, it said. % Militants issued a statement today in Punjab threatening further attacks on Hindus unless police “stopped killing Sikh youths”.

Sikhs have accused! police of killing suspects in fake gun battles and staged escape attempts. Police deny the charge.

In Punjab gunmen shot dead a Communist Party activist, four members of his family and his bodyguard, police said.

They said Sukhvinder Singh Dhaliwal had’ been organizing a peace campaign in villages around Faridkot district.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 17, 1987