(New Kerala.com
02 May 2006 # IANS)
Rights groups condemn Vadodara police for firing
Ahmedabad: Several civil rights groups in Gujarat Tuesday condemned Monday's police firing in Vadodara that killed two people and sparked violence in the city leading to loss of three more lives in two days that took the death toll to five.
Police had opened fire at a group of Muslims protesting the Vadodara civic authorities' demolition drive targeting a 200-yeard old shrine that was allegedly encroaching the public space.
"The police action, apart from being a crime and punishable under law, is not in any way conducive to building trust between citizens and the law-enforcing agency," rights organisations Prashant, ANHAD, Communalism Combat and Citizens for Justice and Peace said in a statement issued here.
"Though the compromise formula had been worked out between the community leaders and the administration a day before, police and the Vadodara Municipal Corporation moved ahead with a sinister motive.
"Demolishing the structure and making a road over the place by afternoon is exactly what had been done to Wali Dakhani's tomb in Ahmedabad just outside the police commissioner's office in 2002," the statement said.
The organisations also criticised police by saying that "they shot with a view to kill", rather than to disperse the angry crowd.
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