Troops patrol Kolkata after riots

At least 50 people were injured and more than 200 detained in the protest called by a Muslim group angered over violence in Nandigram district, where 34 people have died since January.

 

Execution demanded

The rural area was earmarked as a petrochemical complex for Indonesia’s Salim Group but protests by villagers, unwilling to give up their land, forced the government to give up on the plan.

Since then, villagers and communist party members have been battling police for control of the area.

“Mostly poor Muslim farmers were at the receiving end in Nandigram when the communists forced their way into Nandigram, and the people are understandably angry,” Siddiqullah Chowdhury, leader of one Muslim group, said.

The All India Forum, which organised Wednesday’s demonstration, said it was also to demand the expulsion of Taslima Nasreen, a controversial Bangladeshi writer who has been given refuge in West Bengal.

She fled her homeland in 1994 after radical Muslims demanded her execution, saying that her books critcised Islam.