Riot Probe, New Cabinet Due in India

As calm returned to Bombay, the government announced Saturday that it will order an investigation of Hindu-Muslim rioting that erupted earlier this month, claiming more than 500 lives.

Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao also prepared to reshuffle his Cabinet and accepted the resignation of all 59 ministers Saturday, according to ministers who asked not to be identified.

They said the embattled Rao asked for and received the resignations at a dinner he hosted for the ministers at his residence.

The ministers said that Rao met with President Shankar Dayal Sharma earlier in the day and that the new Cabinet is scheduled to be announced at the presidential palace this evening.

For the first time in 10 days, Bombay’s streets were crowded with buses, cars and people. Banks, offices and schools reopened on Saturday, a working day in India for all but government employees.

But workers at Bombay’s port, the country’s busiest, went on strike after they found a body of a laborer with stab injuries, the United News of India news agency reported.

A 17-hour curfew continued in eight areas of the city, and an overnight curfew in 18 areas. The riots began on Jan. 6 after Shiv Sena, a local Hindu radical party, called for its followers to burn Muslim-owned homes, shops and property.

Hindu-Muslim relations had been extremely tense since Hindu radicals destroyed a mosque in northern India on Dec. 6. More than 1,100 people were killed across the nation in rioting that immediately followed the mosque’s destruction.

Chief Minister Sudhakarrao Naik, the state’s highest elected official, said he will ask the chief justice of the Bombay High Court to appoint a judge to probe the renewed rioting in Bombay that began Jan. 6.

The probe was first suggested by Rao, who toured the city Friday and was widely criticized for failing to blame radical Hindu groups for the rioting.

Speculation over the Cabinet reshuffle has been rife for several weeks as Rao took on the jobs of ministers who quit. Rao has said he has too much work to concentrate on opening up India’s economy to foreign investors.

Earlier this month, Aviation Minister Madhav Rao Scindia quit after a leased jetliner crashed in New Delhi.

All aboard escaped, some with minor injuries.