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- By Parinda News Bureau, May 02, 2006, 11:40 IST
The demolition of more than 200-year-old dargah of Rafikuddin Ramatullah Aulia in Vadodara by civic authorities has sparked widespread violence. Four persons have been killed in clashes and police firing, forcing the authorities to impose curfew in the sensitive walled city.
Twenty-two people were injured, many of them in police firing and the others in stone-pelting, at the Champaner Gate area following violent protests against the demolition of the dargah by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC).
The trouble started when a VMC squad began demolishing the dargah, which authorities said was encroaching on government land. Residents of the area began shouting slogans and then attacked officials involved in the demolition, Vadodara city police commissioner Deepak Swarup said.
Police opened fire after failing to disperse the protestors with teargas and a cane-charge."Police have intensified patrolling apart from clamping curfew in all the sensitive areas and the situation is presently under control," Swarup said.
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