Indian police clash with Hindu radicals

13 Sep, 2004

Indian police used a baton charge to drive back hundreds of slogan-shouting Hindu hard-liners trying to make their way to a controversial 17th century Muslim general's tomb they have threatened to demolish.
Police said they charged a crowd of about 500 people throwing stones at them and passing vehicles in Panchwad village near the heavily guarded tomb in western Maharashtra state, about 250 km (150 miles) from Bombay.
Some 2,000 officers have been deployed in the area over fears that Hindu hard-liners could rekindle the kind of religious violence seen in 1992 when they defied a court order and tore down the 16th-century Babri masjid (mosque), which they said stood on the birthplace of Hindu god Ram.
That sparked India's worst religious riots since independence, in which some 3,000 people were killed.

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