Curfew lifted in Guwahati after mob violence

GUWAHATI: Authorities in Assam's main city of Guwahati Sunday lifted a curfew after normalcy returned a day after one person was killed and 230 others were injured when tribals demanding Scheduled Tribe status clashed with locals.

"The situation is normal now and hence the decision to lift the curfew orders, although security presence in the troubled areas would continue," a police official said.

Local residents and activists of the All Assam Adivasi Students' Association (AAASA) clashed in the city streets Saturday afternoon.

Thousands of AAASA members were staging a protest march through a main city thoroughfare demanding Scheduled Tribe status for the Adivasi community, mostly working in Assam's tea plantations. 

The marchers were denied permission by the authorities to take out the procession, but they defied the orders and later went on a rampage vandalising shops and businesses and damaging close to 100 public transport vehicles and cars. 

Police lobbed teargas shells to disperse the marchers and in the confusion the protestors began running in all directions.

"By then the local residents mobilised support and came out in hundreds armed with sticks and other crude implements and started attacking the fleeing protestors," the official said.

A government statement late Saturday said one person died and 230 people were injured in the mob attack.  Some of the local newspapers Sunday, however, put the death toll at 20. A local television channel is putting the death toll at 12.

The government has ordered a probe into the incident following mounting pressure from opposition political parties who have accused police of late reaction in dealing with the violence. 

A maximum-security alert was sounded across Assam with authorities fearing a possible backlash by the Adivasis on Assamese pockets in tea garden dominated areas in the state.