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Navsari hit by communal clashes

Minister of State for Home and Border Security Haren Pandya told reporters in Gandhinagar that 38 people had been arrested so far since Sunday.

Pandya said about 15 shops and kiosks were torched or damaged in Navsari on Monday morning. Police fired six rounds in the air to quell rioting mobs. Six persons, including a police constable, were injured while one person was stabbed, he pointed out.

In the first incident in Alipore locality on Sunday, 15 people were arrested after they clashed over the cow protection issue. Four of the injured were hospitalised.

The incident was, apparently, a sequel to the tension between sections of two local communities following Bishop Hazra Sarguna of the Evangelical Church of India, Tamil Nadu, resorting to a hunger strike at Chikhli village, seven kilometres from Vyara in Surat district since Tuesday last.

He was protesting against what he alleged as the 'demolition of a church and conversion of its owner to Hinduism' by Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists.

In the second incident, about 100 people clashed and threw stones at each other while one person was stabbed in the scuffle, the minister added.

Three press photographers, who were also injured, were sitting on a dharna in the town.

Pandya said violence had begun on Sunday when some persons from one community clashed with a group of another, who were protesting the transportation of cow and other milch animals.

UNI

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