Atali clash: Peace committee nears settlement

Normalcy in communally-tense Atali village seemed within the reach as a peace committee comprising villagers today asked the village panchayat to get written assurance from the majority community, especially a few people named by the police, that they will try help maintaining peace.
The committee said that once the assurance is given, the minority families can be asked to return to their homes.
A meeting of the peace committee comprising 25 people of the village was held today in Machgar village and people of several nearby villages-- Navada, Chandawali, Gadkheda, Bukharpur, Dayalpur and Sautai-- took part in it.
The meeting decided that the residents of Atali village should first give an assurance in writing that there would not be any situation of communal strife in the village in future.

The minority community has left the village after the clashes broke out on July 1. Since then, efforts were made to convince both the communities to join hands for a peaceful solution to the problem.
However, nothing has come up positive even after efforts from the community and administration.

Azad Tongar, member of the committee, told that they met Police Commissioner Subhash Yadav a few days back. Yadav had asked the committee to get an undertaking signed by six people, whose name has been retained, assuring that they would not be igniting any communal issue in future.
The representatives from Atali have sought a time of 24 hours to get back on the issue.

The peace committee also assured that according to the talks they were having with the administration, no one would be harassed by the administration.
It was decided that once the people of Atali submit the undertaking signed by the persons asked by the Commissioner of Police, the committee would be meeting him to get the peace process carried forward.
"If anyone feels that he or she is being harassed after the situation is normal, the committee would be standing by him and would be talking to the administration in this regard," he said.
Atali village witnessed large scale communal violence in May, as scores of families of the minority community were forced to flee the village and take shelter in police station.

Several houses of the minority community and a mosque, which was at the centre of the row, were set ablaze.
In order to find a solution to the dispute, more than 1,000 people from about two dozen villages of the district participated in a Panchayat at Machgar village here on July 6 and formed the committee to settle the issue.