Police Arrest 1,000 at Mosque, Attack Hindus

Police arrested 1,000 Hindu militants demanding possession of a 16th-Century mosque and baton-charged a crowd who wanted to lynch a Muslim in the sacred Indian city of Ayodhya today.

The militants, whose campaign to build a temple on the site of the mosque brought down the government last month, went peacefully to jail to win publicity for their demands.

Officials said police detained 1,000 militants, including 150 women, who made largely symbolic attempts to break into the mosque.

The militants’ action today marked the start of a new campaign by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or Worldwide Hindu Organization, to send 1,000 volunteers to be arrested at the site every day for a month.

As the detained Hindu militants marched off to board police buses, a near-riot broke out nearby when Ayodhya residents accused a Muslim youth of stabbing one of the Hindu holy men who live off the charity of the devout.

“Give us the Muslim,” they chanted after police rescued the youth by arresting him.

Witnesses said the crowd of about 600 blocked police from taking the youth away for an hour, some of them throwing stones and trying to set fire to a shop owned by a Muslim family.

The crowd gave up when police charged at them with batons.