India: Intelligence Bureau claims possibility of more communal flare-ups in Uttar Pradesh in the coming days

From: The Times of India

Communal situation 'volatile' in UP, IB tells Centre
Ashish Tripathi, TNN | Sep 24, 2012, 12.22PM IST

As many as seven incidents of communal clashes have taken place in different parts of UP in the first six months of Akhilesh Yadav's rule.

LUCKNOW: The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has alerted the Centre about the possibility of more communal flare-ups in Uttar Pradesh in the coming days.

The IB alert follows series of communal violence witnessed in the state after Samajwadi Party (SP) came to power in March earlier this year.

As many as seven incidents of communal clashes have taken place in different parts of UP in the first six months of SP rule.

The latest incident occurred at Masuri in Ghaziabad last week. Six persons were killed and 28 injured when police fired to control an irate mob which torched a police station, after the Holy Quran, with its pages splashed with abusive graffiti, was discovered from a place.

In past six months, local disputes have led to communal violence twice in Bareilly and Pratapgarh, while Mathuta saw a similar clash once.

Lucknow and Allahabad witnessed violent protests on August 17 over alleged atrocities on Muslims in Assam and Myanmar.

In all these incidents, investigations done by the police so far have found that violence was either pre-planned or local issues were used to instigate people of one community or another. Sources said that IB has not ruled out political conspiracy behind all these incidents.

While the lawlessness under the SP rule is being held responsible for the volatile situation in UP, all the major political parties are trying to create rift and take the advantage of polarization of votes on caste and communal lines with an eye on the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Sources said that the major worry of the IB is that the modules of various terrorist outfits might use the volatile situation to trigger more violence and engineer terror attacks, particularly on or before the tenth anniversary of Ayodhya Babri mosque demolition on December 6.