Press Note

The action of the Vadodara Police in shooting at and killing protestors agitating the demolition of an old dargah in the city yesterday needs to be looked at seriously. The ‘compromise’ formula worked out between the community leaders and the administration a day before clearly appears to have been that a part of the shrine would be sacrificed for ‘development.’ The next day apparently the police and corporation came with a sinister motive, demolished the whole structure and by afternoon had even paved a road over it. This is exactly what had been done to Wali Dakhani’s tomb in Ahmedabad just outside the Commissioner of Police’s office on March 1, 2002. The attempt appears to be to culturally annihilate a section by targeting the places of worship.

Worse still, when the police came to ‘demolish’ the place of worship and found protestors, they shot to kill, This action of the police apart from being a crime and punishable under law, is not in any way, conducive to building any trust between citizens and the police.

Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, Co-Editors, Communalism Combat, Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT, MK Raina, SAHMAT, Fr. Cedric Prakash, Prashant, Ahmedabad, Sheba George, SAHRWARU, Ahmedabad