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Death toll passes 30 in Delhi violence as Modi issues plea for calm Criticism of police grows after mob violence kills nearly 40 in India’s capital
(about 16 hours later)
NEW DELHI — The sit-in where women had gathered to protest a new citizenship law was gone, the posters torn and trampled. The mosque next door stood charred and silent, its floor smeared with blood. Stillness filled a major road, empty except for stray dogs picking their way through debris. NEW DELHI — Rahis Mohammed's voice shook as he described how a mob of 200 people arrived in his neighborhood intent on destruction while calls to the police went unanswered.
A tense calm settled on a swath of India’s capital Wednesday after a stunning outbreak of communal violence this week left more than 30 dead. The riots are the worst such clashes to hit Delhi in decades and came as President Trump made his first official visit to India. Standing on a deserted road dotted with charred vehicles Wednesday, he watched as a police car passed. “After 48 hours they have come,” Mohammed, 40, said bitterly. “They left us to die.”
Mobs of Hindus and Muslims had clashed on roads and alleyways in northeast Delhi, throwing stones and crude gasoline bombs. At least three mosques were torched, as were scores of homes and businesses. Witnesses said that instead of stopping the violence, police joined crowds shouting Hindu nationalist slogans and fired indiscriminately. As India’s capital reels from an outbreak of communal violence that has left nearly 40 people dead and 200 injured, criticism of the response by law enforcement authorities is growing.
Trump’s second day in India: Violence in Delhi and support for Modi on ‘religious freedom’ Witnesses say police were unwilling or unable to control the mobs and, in some instances, may have participated in the worst riots in New Delhi in decades.
On Wednesday afternoon, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended days of silence on the riots. He issued an appeal for calm, urging people in Delhi to “maintain peace and brotherhood at all times” and restore normalcy. At least one police officer is among those killed in the violence. The Delhi Police rejected accusations that its response was slow or inadequate and denied allegations that officers encouraged rioters and beat residents. Others accused the police of shooting indiscriminately.
This week’s violence marked the second time in Modi’s political career that he has presided over a significant episode of communal violence. In 2002, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, more than 1,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims, in three days of riots. A court-appointed panel cleared Modi of involvement in the violence. By Thursday, the violence in neighborhoods of northeastern Delhi had subsided. Television channels showed a senior police officer walking the streets of one riot-hit area wearing riot gear and a helmet, urging people to come out of their homes and return to daily life.
Why protests are erupting over India’s new citizenship law The violence came after months of protests over a controversial citizenship law enacted by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The law has intensified fears among India’s 200 million Muslims that Modi’s goal is to marginalize them and turn India into a Hindu nation.
The riots in Delhi took place against a backdrop of rising tensions over a controversial citizenship law passed by the Modi government in December. The law creates a fast-track toward citizenship for migrants belonging to six religions, excluding Islam. Critics say the measure is unconstitutional and has stoked fears that Muslims will be treated like second-class citizens in Modi’s India. Protests against the law have erupted nationwide, with Indians of all religions taking part. Critics say the law, which excludes Muslim migrants from a fast track to citizenship, runs counter to India’s secular ethos. Supporters of the law say it helps persecuted religious minorities from nearby countries. Members of Modi’s party have vilified the protesters, likening them to traitors and criminals.
But Muslims have led the opposition to the law. Meanwhile, members of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have vilified the protesters, calling them traitors who deserve to be shot and linking them with India’s rival Pakistan. One such leader, Kapil Mishra, helped trigger this week’s violence: He threatened to clear a sit-in conducted by Muslim women, sparking a clash between supporters and opponents of the citizenship law. This week, those tensions boiled over, triggered by a politician in Modi’s party who threatened to remove protesters holding a sit-in in northeastern Delhi. Clashes broke out late Sunday and devolved into deadly violence throughout Monday and Tuesday, including during President Trump’s visit to the city.
The way the police responded to the violence in Delhi points to a troubling conclusion, said Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University who has researched communal clashes in India. “The cops either looked away or participated,” he said. That means there was “state connivance and state culpability — it’s a pogrom,” Varshney said. It is not clear whether Trump’s presence in Delhi and the attendant security demands affected the police’s ability to respond to the riots. One news report suggested that the police had informed the government that they were short of personnel to control the violence. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs denied the report, saying that adequate forces were in place. The police force in India’s capital is controlled by the central government.
M.S. Randhawa, a spokesman for the Delhi Police, told reporters Wednesday that “sufficient force was deployed” in the northeastern part of the city, and additional paramilitary personnel were brought in to assist. The “situation is under control,” he said. Vikram Singh, a former senior police official in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, said the fact that authorities had not arrested the politician who helped spur the violence spoke of interference by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party. The law should be “unsparing,” he said, not dictated by political whims.
In the afternoon, Ajit Doval, India’s national security adviser, toured a riot-hit area on foot to reassure residents. An agitated young woman in a burqa who said she was a student approached him. “We’re not safe,” she said. “You don’t have to worry,” he responded. “I give you my word.” The Delhi Police was already facing accusations of brutality and partisanship before this week’s violence. In December, police stormed a university, beating unarmed students and firing tear gas into a library during a protest of the citizenship law. Meanwhile, authorities have not made any arrests in assaults against students at a different university. The perpetrators allegedly are associated with the governing party.
On Tuesday, as Trump commended Modi for his “incredible” efforts to uphold religious freedom at a news conference in central Delhi, violence was erupting in the northeastern part of the city. This week’s failures are seen as far more grave. Member of Parliament Naresh Gujral wrote to the home ministry castigating the police for inaction, New Delhi Television reported. Gujral said that he had called police asking them to help 16 Muslims trapped in a house Wednesday night as a mob tried to break in. No police went to the scene. Instead, those trapped were ultimately rescued by their Hindu neighbors, he said.
In Ashok Nagar, about 200 men chanted Jai Shri Ram or Victory to Lord Ram, a rallying cry of Modi’s ruling party, as they vandalized and torched a row of shops, said Avichal Dubey, a journalist for the Wire who witnessed the scene. Some climbed the minaret of a mosque, broke off a loudspeaker and hoisted a Hindu nationalist saffron flag. A senior judge in Delhi also criticized the city’s police as failing to take steps to arrest the rioters or those inciting violence through hate speech.
Shehzad Khan, 48, manages a small clinic in the area of Brij Puri. Normally his patients come in complaining of fevers or coughs. On Tuesday, three people arrived with gunshot wounds and more than a dozen with injuries from hurled stones. Groups of men carried in two dead bodies, Khan said, one with a gunshot wound to the head and the other charred in a fire. “How many more lives have to be lost? How much property has to be destroyed?” said Justice S. Muralidhar on Wednesday, expressing “anguish” at the situation, according to a report in Bar & Bench, an Indian legal publication. Hours later, the government issued a transfer order for the judge that lawyers described as highly unusual.
Residents described violent confrontations between groups of Hindus and Muslims near a main road that separates a Hindu-dominated area from a Muslim-dominated neighborhood. One Muslim family carrying bags of luggage hurried across the main road from the Hindu side to the Muslim side. On Thursday, the U.S. State Department extended its sympathies to the families of the dead and injured. “We urge all parties to maintain peace, refrain from violence, and respect the right of peaceful assembly,” it said.
“We only had time to carry a blanket and one pair of clothes each,” said Ayesha Salmani, 32, as she clutched the hand of her young daughter. Salmani said they fled their home as soon as they felt it was safe to leave. At Delhi’s Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, bereaved families waited to claim the bodies of relatives killed in the violence. Muslims sat in one corner while Hindu families sat at a distance in an unspoken religious separation. Relatives wept and accused the police of complicity.
Mohammad Abbas is the 85-year-old caretaker of the small Farukhiya mosque in the same area. After evening prayers Tuesday, he said that police officers attacked him and the mosque’s imam. He said they called him a traitor, and he saw them vandalizing and setting fire to the mosque. When he was taken to a hospital, he said he was covered in blood. “They beat me so mercilessly, my hands were broken,” Abbas said. Waris Ali was waiting for the body of his nephew Mohsin Ali, who was 24 and newly married. Mohsin Ali had left his job at a shop and was heading home when he called colleagues to tell them that mobs were on the road. They did not hear from him again. After a frantic search, his uncle said, the family discovered his body at the hospital with head injuries.
Randhawa, the police spokesman, denied the allegations but said that the authorities would take action if evidence were provided. Niha Masih and Tania Dutta contributed to this report.
Outside the mosque, it was hard to believe this was India’s bustling capital. The area looked like a war zone: Acrid smoke drifted from a school that was burned and vandalized, and empty roads were littered with broken bricks and burned-out vehicles. Inside the mosque, the walls were blackened with soot, and charred books lay scattered on the floor. On the roof, an Indian flag fluttered weakly in the breeze. Worst communal violence in Delhi in decades leaves 17 dead as Trump visits India
Tania Dutta contributed to this report.
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