Gujarat: 24 Detained For Violence During Ram Navami Processions In Vadodara

Police have detained 24 persons for allegedly hurling stones at two Ram Navami processions in communally-sensitive areas in Vadodara city of Gujarat, a top official said on Friday. The incidents had occurred on Thursday when Ram Navami was celebrated.  Vadodara Police Commissioner Shamsher Singh said the situation in the city was under control and people were carrying out their routine activities. "We have so far detained 24 persons in connection with the stone pelting incidents that occurred during the Ram Navami processions in the city on Thursday. They will be formally arrested soon after the registration of first information reports (FIRs). The situation is completely under control and normalcy was restored yesterday itself," Singh said. 

Stones were hurled at two separate Ram Navami processions when they were passing through the city's communally-sensitive areas of Fatehpura and nearby Kumbharwada. At least two persons were injured in stone-pelting by a mob at Kumbharwada, the police said. Local BJP MLA Manisha Vakil was part of the procession which came under attack at Kumbharwada. In some videos of the incident aired by new channels, people can be seen running for shelter during stone pelting, while a chariot that was carrying a statue of Lord Ram, was also pulled away to a safer place by the devotees to save it from stones. Some of the injured persons told reporters that miscreants hurled stones on them from the terraces of nearby structures.

Hours before that incident, stones were thrown at a Ram Navami procession, organised by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal, in Fatehpura area. Hindu organisations had alleged that despite knowing that similar incidents of violence had occurred in these areas in the past too, police were nowhere to be seen when the procession, taken out every year on this route, came under attack. Following the incident, Bajrang Dal's Vadodara unit chief Ketan Trivedi had claimed that the miscreants attacked the Ram Navami procession as part of a "planned conspiracy" and similar incidents had happened on several occasions in the past too.