India Violence Persists as Sikhs Kill 6, Hindus Stage Protests

Sikh separatists killed six people Friday in Punjab state, bringing to at least 96 the number slain since Monday by extremists fighting to create an independent Sikh nation of Khalistan.

In Bombay, rock-hurling Hindus damaged buses and blocked railways in a third day of protests against the killings. Twenty-five people in Bombay reportedly were slightly injured.

Police in Amritsar, the Sikh holy city 250 miles northwest of New Delhi, said separatists with pistols and submachine guns entered a farmhouse near Amritsar and killed Satnam Singh Bajwa, a local leader of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress-I party.

Shot dead with Bajwa--a Sikh and former state cabinet minister--were two of his friends, two bodyguards and a driver, police said. Bajwa was helping to organize a public awareness campaign against Sikh separatism.

On Monday, separatists killed 38 people aboard a hijacked bus in Punjab in the bloodiest attack of their independence drive. On Tuesday, gunmen killed another 34 people in two buses in neighboring Haryana state. All but one of the victims were Hindus.

Bombay Shops Closed

In Bombay, India’s financial capital, a strike called by the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party and the city’s ruling Shiv Sena to protest the massacres closed shops, schools and businesses.

Police said rock-throwing demonstrators damaged about 40 buses and caused minor injuries to 10 transport workers. The incidents brought traffic to a standstill.

The Press Trust of India news agency said strikes also disrupted life in Ajmer, 125 miles southwest of New Delhi, and in the industrial city of Kanpur, 380 miles southeast of the capital. A work stoppage was also staged in Raipur, 620 miles southeast of New Delhi.

Lawyers in Calcutta, India’s largest city, boycotted courts to protest the bus slayings.

Strikes were held Thursday in four northern states and New Delhi, where Hindu rioters burned Sikh homes, temples and shops. A curfew prompted by the violence was lifted Friday.