Yashwant Sinha demands NIA probe into Jharkhand violence

Former union minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha on Thursday demanded an NIA probe into the communal violence in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh district during Ram Navami in which four people died.

The curfew imposed on Sunday night by the district administration was relaxed for nine hours on Thursday. The district administration will decide on its lifting on Friday.

"There seems to an outside hand in the violence. There seems to be a hand of cross-border terrorists. The National Investigation Agency should probe the entire incident," Sinha told reporters in Hazaribagh.

Sinha earlier represented Hazaribagh in the Lok Sabha. Now his son Jayant Sinha, a minister in the Narendra Modi government, is a parliamentarian from there.

The violence began when a Ram Navami procession was stopped and members of a community objected to the use of loudspeakers. It led to clashes between two groups in which many people, including policemen, were injured. Over a dozen shops and several vehicles were set ablaze by the mobs.

Police have registered 10 FIRs and named 137 people as accused.

Meanwhile, police sources said five people preparing petrol bombs in Habibnagar colony were killed when the bomb exploded in their house.

The sources said the bodies were buried in secret by residents to hide the evidence, but police managed to exhume one body and were trying to locate the others.

Hazaribagh in the past had also witnessed terrorist activity. Two terrorists accused of attacking the American consulate in Kolkata in 2002 had taken shelter in Hazaribagh. They were later killed in a gun battle with security forces.

--IANS

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