Four women stuck at relative's house return home in riot-hit Khajuri Khas

The police on Saturday helped four women of a family to return home in the riot-hit Khajuri Khas area after nearly a week, a senior officer said.

When the women remained stuck at a relative's house in the Chand Bagh area, their neighbours put up a calender with an image of 'Ram Darbar' from the epic Ramayana to protect their house from rioters who ran amok on streets of northeast Delhi.

The women went to their relative's house, barely a kilometre away, on Sunday.

"When we were patrolling in the area on Saturday morning...we saw four women who looked worried. They told us that their home was in Khajuri Khas and since Sunday, they were stranded in Chand Bagh," Joint Commissioner of Police (EOW) O P Mishra.

There is a marriage in their relative's house and they had gone there to see preparations.

"We asked them to come with us and safely dropped them to their house," Mishra said.

The neighbours of the women were very happy when they saw them.

The neighbours said that they kept calling them after the violence broke out and were worried about their safety, police said.

"The neighbours showed us a calender which they pasted on the window of the house of the women. They said that when the violence broke out, they pasted the calender...so that the mob would not target their house," the officer said.

The women are engaged in stitching cloths and have been living in the area from past many years.

The death toll in Delhi's communal violence rose to 42 and more than 250 people have been injured in the incidents.