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TWO persons were killed and more than a dozen injured in vi T olence across Punjab and parts of Haryana today after Sant Ramanand of Dera Sachkhand, injured in an attack in Vienna on Sunday, died in hospital. Angry Dera followers took to the streets, torching at least 11 train coaches and an engine, stoning buses, blocking traffic and clashing with police at several places.
T The Army was called out in in Jalandhar, Phagwara and Hoshiarpur — curfew was imposed in the three cities and in Ludhiana — and placed on standby elsewhere. Cable operators were told to stop telecast of channels beaming pictures of the violence in Jalandhar.
Firing was reported from several places in Punjab as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal appealed for peace. Badal said he had asked External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to take up the matter with his counterpart in Austria and make arrangements for bringing back the body of Sant Ramanand.
In Vienna, police spokesman Michael Takacs said the Sunday attack, which left 16 people seriously wounded, "had clearly been planned".
Six of the attackers, who were laterapprehended and roughed up by Dera followers, were also in hospital. Police did not rule out the possibility of more arrests. Dera head Sant Niranjan Dass is among the seriously injured.
In Lambra village in Jalandhar, a 500-strong mob tried to burn the police station and gheraoed securitymen who later opened fire, killing one person and wounding another.
At the Jalandhar Cantonment railway station, GRP personnel opened fire to scatter a mob that torched three coaches of the Jammu Tawi Express.
In Phillaur, protesters gheraoed the vehicle of the SHO and a bus of Punjab Police commandos on the National Highway and attempted to snatch their weapons. Ten people were injured when the commandos opened fire and one of them later died.
Kapurthala Deputy Commissioner R K Chaudhary was stopped by a mob near the Vidhipur railway crossing on the road to Phagwara from Kartarpur. The mob attacked his gunmen and three of them were injured.
The Chandigarh-Jalandhar highway was blocked at Banga by protesters. All trains on the Ambala-Amritsar section have been cancelled, including the Shatabdis.
The Delhi-Lahore bus and Lahore-Delhi bus were stopped briefly and diverted from Ludhiana and Amritsar via Moga and Sultanpur Lodhi.
The Election Commission, on a report from the Jalandhar DC, postponed the Nurmahal by-election, scheduled for May 28.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was deeply distressed over the outbreak of violence in Punjab. "Whatever the provocation, it is important to maintain peace and harmony among different sections of the people," he said in an appeal.
Describing the killing of Sant Ramanand as "most painful", Chief Minister Badal said the incident was "the handiwork of those who always on the lookout for an excuse to create unrest" in Punjab. He urged all political parties to join hands to maintain peace and not try to gain any political mileage out of this incident.
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