India Orders Army Patrols, Curfews to Curtail Violence

Authorities enforced curfews and ordered the army to patrol several cities as Hindu-Muslim clashes over a temple-mosque dispute today left 14 people dead, raising the overall number of people killed to 68, police said.

Violence lingered for a second day in several Indian cities after erupting Wednesday during a nationwide strike called by the right-wing fundamentalist Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party to protest the arrest of its president, L. K. Advani, who was leading a pro-temple procession.

The arrest prompted the BJP to withdraw its crucial parliamentary support to the five-party National Front coalition government of Prime Minister V. P. Singh, reducing the government to a minority in Parliament and putting it close to collapse.

The Press Trust of India and state-run Doordarshan television said the worst incidents occurred in the northern Rajastan state capital city of Jaipur, where security forces and violent agitators fought at three places with guns and rocks.

Five people died in the city, the agency said, adding that one other person died in police gunfire in the nearby Jodhpur town.

It said authorities early this morning recovered 22 bodies from two slum colonies in Jaipur. Residents contacted by telephone said attackers armed with weapons raided two residential colonies, attacking residents with knifes or clubbing them with sticks. Many of the victims were doused with fuel and set ablaze.

Police reported at least eight people killed in similar Hindu-Muslim clashes and police firings at Ahmedabad and Godara cities in western Gujarat state, Howrah and Purulia districts in eastern West Bengal state, and Hubli city in southern Karnataka state.