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PANCHWAD, INDIA, September 12, 2004: Indian police used a baton charge to drive back hundreds of slogan-shouting Hindu hardliners trying to make their way to a controversial 17th century Muslim general’s tomb they have threatened to demolish. Police said they charged a crowd of about 500 people throwing stones at them and passing vehicles in Panchwad village near the heavily guarded tomb in western Maharashtra state, about 250 km (150 miles) from Bombay. Some 2,000 officers have been deployed in the area.



“The mob turned unruly, started chasing press people and throwing stones at police. We had no option but to resort to a baton charge to restore law and order in this area,” C.G. Kumbhar, district superintendent of police, told Reuters. “They started chanting slogans that they should be allowed to go and carry out their work of destroying the tomb.” Kumbhar said about 100 people had been detained after the clash and authorities were on alert to prevent anybody from sneaking up the hills to the tomb of the general, Afzalkhan, which Hindus want to remove as it lies near the fort of the Hindu warrior king, Shivaji, whom he tried to murder. Police had already detained hundreds of people as a preventive measure and set up dozens of barricades on the winding roads leading to the tomb and the Pratapgadh fort near the hill resort of Mahabaleshwar.

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