RIOTING PARALYSES LIFE IN CALCUTTA

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 15

RIOTING PARALYSES LIFE IN CALCUTTA

(N.Z P.A. Reuter —Copyright)

CALCUTTA, March 11

Street fighting between stone-throwing mobs and police completely paralysed life in Calcutta early today after a day of violence yesterday. Police opened fire in five places in the city in the face of heavy bombardments of stones last night.

Road blocks were set up all over the city as youths hurled stones at police, vehicles and public buildings in rioting which grew from a 24-hour work stoppage in protest against the West Bengal state government’s food policy.

Scores of passengers, including women and children, were held up

today at Calcutta airport, seven miles from the city centre, as all international and several internal flights were cancelled.

It was unsafe to I drive into the city.

A dawn-to-dusk curfew was | Imposed on the Dum Dumj area around the airport and in some other parts of the city. Troops were called ini at nightfall. Two bombs were hurled at | a police jeep escorting a foreign diplomat and a mail van from the airport to the city last night. No-one was

At least 15 people were killed in the Calcutta area yesterday as police clashed with demonstrators who set fire to trains and railway stations. Ninety people were arrested. Many rail services were suspended after attacks on moving trains and railway property.

Police guarded all food warehouses and once used ; tear gas to drive awayi looters. Ten Killed West Bengal's chief minister. Mr P. C. Sen, said 10 people were killed when police fired in the industrial belt of Howrah, Calcutta’s twin city, where two trains were set on fire and destroyed.

At least four people, including a police inspector, died

lin clashes at railway stations iin the nearby townships of j I Rishra and Konnagar. i Another was killed when:

police opened fire on a crowd which set fire to a railway office in Asanol. The 24-hour stoppage was called by the State’s Leftwing political parties, who want a judicial inquiry into recent police actions against I demonstrators protesting

J against the food policy. ’ However, most observers believe the food issue is no 11 longer the chief motivation

behind the agitation which has been sweeping West Bengal, says the “New York Times.”

They believe the pro-Pek-ing Communists are now leading the agitation in a well-organised effort to embarrass Mr Sen’s State Government and the two-month-old National Government of Mrs Indira Gandhi.

Mr Sen pointed out that the violence was centred not in the districts where the food shortage has been most acute but in the Hooghly district which, he said, is “dominated by Communists.”