The violence in Kasganj district of Uttar Pradesh refuses to end as a shop was burnt down in Malgodam road area last night. Police investigation was on.
Meanwhile, in a post on his Facebook page, Bareilly district magistrate Raghvendra Vikram Singh has asked why it has become a "trend" for some to first "enter Muslim localities by force, raise anti-Pakistan slogans and then create ruckus".
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Meanwhile, in an embarrassment for the Uttar Pradesh government, Governor Ram Naik termed the Kasganj communal clashes as a "blot" on the state and asked the state authorities to initiate measures to ensure such incidents did not recur.
Describing the clashes as "shameful", Naik observed that this was for the first time in the last 9-10 months that such an incident occurred in the state.
Under fire over the violence, the UP government went into damage control mode and shunted out Kasganj Superintendent of Police Sunil Kumar Singh to "a less significant post", according to officials.
The violence started on Republic Day when a "Tiranga Yatra" in the form of a bike rally was taken out by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and some other Hindu organisations in the town. As they were passing through the Hulka locality -- a Muslim majority area -- some youths pelted stones on the bikers.
After that, it became a free for all and the bikers also retaliated with stones. Soon there was firing from the locality in which two persons received gun shot wounds and one succumbed in the hospital later.
(With agency inputs)