|
Curfew imposed in Jaipur
14/05/2008 15:56 - (SA)
Jaipur - Police imposed a daylong curfew in the western Indian city of Jaipur on Wednesday to prevent any retaliatory violence after a series of blasts in crowded areas left at least 80 people dead.
Authorities suspect Islamic militants were behind the blasts, and they moved quickly to stop any potential clashes between the city's Hindu majority and its sizable Muslim minority. Police were deployed in force and people kept off the streets of Jaipur's old walled city, where all seven bombs went off on Tuesday.
The bombers may have been aiming "to create communal tension," said Vasundhara Raje, the chief minister of Rajasthan state, of which Jaipur is the capital. "But there is peace in the city. The curfew is a precaution."
With police seemingly everywhere, streets in the old city were largely devoid of pedestrians, and shops throughout the rest of Jaipur were also shuttered.
'Our lives are together'
"Neither the Hindus or the Muslims here want to fight," said Mohiuddin Qureshi, a gemstone trader who works in a market that was bombed.
"Our lives are together, our businesses are together. This is the work of outsiders," said Qureshi, who went to 10 burials on Wednesday.
The attack came a week before India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, was to visit Pakistan to discuss the rivals' four-year peace process.
Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said Mukherjee would press Islamabad to act against Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups, which India accuses Pakistan of backing.
"The absence of violence and stopping cross-border terrorism is a very high priority for India," Menon told reporters.
But he stopped short of alleging a Pakistani hand in Tuesday's attack.
"We are still in the process of investigating. I don't want to jump to conclusions," he said.
Slender leads
Police in Jaipur have so far questioned nearly a dozen people. But no arrests have been made, and Raje told reporters that authorities only "have some slender leads".
"Obviously, it's a terrorist plot," AS Gill, the police chief of Rajasthan, said hours after the attack. "The way it has been done, the attempt was to cause the maximum damage to human life."
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, as is the case with most bombings in India.
But soon after the attack, authorities were suggesting blame would eventually fall on Pakistan and the Islamic militant groups India accuses it of backing.
"One can't rule out the involvement of a foreign power," said India's junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, using language commonly understood to refer to Pakistan.
Jaiswal, speaking just hours after the attack, refused to say if he was talking about Pakistan. But he suggested the bombings were connected to previous attacks on India, saying that "the blasts are part of a big conspiracy".
|
News
