Sikh Group Bombs Hindu Parade; 32 Die

Sikh extremists set off a bomb near a Hindu religious procession in Punjab on Tuesday, killing at least 32 people and triggering clashes between the two communities, police said.

A police officer died and five were injured as they tried to quell the unrest, and 15 more people were killed in violence elsewhere in Punjab.

Witnesses said a procession of 14,000 Hindus, celebrating the birthday of their deity Rama, had reached a crowded vegetable market in Batala when the bomb went off on a bicycle or scooter.

S. S. Channi, deputy commissioner of Gurdaspur district, imposed an indefinite curfew on Batala, an industrial town of 100,000 people in the north of the state.

Police said the blast was almost certainly the work of the Khalistan Commando Force, Babbar Khalsa and the Khalistan Liberation Force--a powerful new coalition of extremist groups fighting for an independent homeland in Punjab.

They said shrapnel from the bomb killed 10 people in the procession including a 5-year-old girl watching it with her parents. At least 50 others were taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

The girl’s mother was among 15 others who died at a Batala hospital shortly afterward. Seven more of the injured were sent for care 21 miles to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, where they died.

After the blast, Hindus rampaged through the market trying to set fire to vehicles and shops owned by Sikhs.

Police fired in the air to enforce the curfew and to control fighting that had broken out between the two groups, senior police Supt. S. K. Goyal said.

Goyal said one police officer was killed and five were injured in the clashes.

Hindus are targets of the extremist campaign in Punjab, in which some 670 people have died this year alone as Sikhs battle for a homeland they call Khalistan--Land of the Pure.

Sikhs are in a majority in Punjab but make up only 16 million of India’s total population of 829 million, of which most are Hindus.