Five Killed in Religious Riot in Western India.
October 11, 2002 03:52 PM ET
BOMBAY (Reuters) - Five people were killed in a western Indian city Friday in clashes between Hindus and Muslims sparked off by protests against remarks by U.S. pastor Jerry Falwell criticizing the Prophet Mohammad, police said.
A senior police official told Reuters police opened fire on the clashing mobs after protesters set fire to shops and vehicles in the textile town of Solapur, 280 miles from the financial capital Bombay.
"Of the five who were killed, three died in police firing and we are investigating the cause of death of the other two," said police sub-inspector D.B. Raut from Solapur. Police said 67 were injured.
Muslim groups had called for a strike Friday in protest against Falwell's remarks, which were made during an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday and reported by a local Urdu language newspaper.
Raut said trouble broke out when a group of Muslims asked Hindu shopkeepers to down shutters in the city's main market.
He said trouble soon spread across the town with mobs from both communities pelting each other with stones.
Monday, shops, schools and businesses shut down in Srinagar, the main city of the Himalayan state of Kashmir, after local traders and social and religious activists called for a general strike to condemn Falwell's comments.
The CBS news Web site quoted Falwell, a prominent member of the American Christian Right, as saying: "I think Mohammad was a terrorist."
"I read enough...by both Muslims and non-Muslims (to decide) that he was a violent man, a man of war," he was quoted as saying.
Police said a curfew had been imposed in Solapur till daybreak and added the situation was tense but under control.
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