Saidabad riots began with a Hanuman Hindu Temple being desecrated with splashes of green color and cow meat (April 8th 2012)

Bhagyanagar, Hyderabad - An indefinite curfew was today imposed in the sensitive Madannapet and Saidabad areas of the walled city. A Hanuman temple at Kurmaguda, (in Saidabad) was found desecrated on the Sunday morning which was followed by incidents of stabbing and heavy stone-pelting, hence curfew has been imposed, police said.

A day after the Hanuman Jayanti, in the early hours of Sunday, 8th April 2012, the devotees of the Hanuman temple at Kurmaguda, in Saidabad, were in for a shock to find green colour had been splashed on the walls of the temple and pieces of cow meat were thrown inside the temple from the grills.

The naturally agitated Hindu youth protested against this sacrilegious act. The Muslims who are a majority in that area launched an offensive on the Hindus and both sides engaged in a duel of stone fight. Sensing trouble, the police indulged in lathi charge and also fired tear gas hurting many of the protesters. At the same time, the Muslims grouped themselves into a larger group and more or less occupied the main road of Saidabad armed with stones and swords, eye witnesses told NewsBharati.

The incidents were reported from the Madannapet and Saidabad areas of the Old City here. Additional forces have been deployed there, a senior police official told.

Curfew has been clamped till further orders in the areas under Madannapet and Saidabad police station limits, Hyderabad Police Commissioner A K Khan said, adding police have picked up two persons for questioning.

“Miscreants pelted stones at buses and set at least two vehicles on fire. Two incidents of stabbing have also been reported,” the police official said.

“The situation is now under control. We have posted pickets and preventive measures are in place,” Hyderabad Police Commissioner A K Khan added.

“We are keeping strict watch in the sensitive areas,” Khan told reporters, appealing to people to cooperate with police and not beMeanwhile, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy directed Director General of Police, Dinesh Reddy, and other senior officials to take stringent action against the miscreants responsible for Madannapet incidents.

Hindu groups are demanding security of the community and punishment to wrong doers. Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy reviewed the situation by talking to the top officials, official sources said.

Here is a video showing some of the riot struck areas during enforcement of a curfew by authorities.

(from News Bharati with additional inputs from Press Trust of India)

Bollywood Stars Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan during their Hindu Wedding Ceremony in India

Lahore, Pakistan (CHAKRA) – A Hindu couple, Mukesh and Padma in Hyderabad Pakistan, tied the knot with a traditional Hindu ceremony but in a fashion different from the rest. The wedding, while having the seven pheras (seven circles around the holy fire) was held on the streets for two purposes. The start of a new relationship for the couple as well as to publicize a stance against the complete disregard of Hindu couples existence.

Since 1947, the Muslim-backed Pakistani government has not recognized Hindu married couples as legally married. Due to this ignorance and disregard for Hindu individuals, many families have had to deal with social, psychological and even domestic problems including domestic violence against women, says Guru Sukh Dev, the pandit who solemnized the Hindu ceremony with Vedic verses.

Ramesh Mal, a local leader organized the demonstration for the couple and he said that ever since the creation of the Islamic State of Pakistan, they have not yet accepted Hindu marriage in order to enact laws that formalize it in a majority-based Muslim society. Mal further stated his opinion that the Pakistani government should follow suit from India and take steps to introduce laws that protect Hindu marriages.

According to Mal, not only do Hindu marriages cause hardships for Hindus in Pakistan but the community also has problems obtaining passports, registering married women, and conducting property transfers. Due to these issues even traveling within Pakistan becomes difficult if not impossible for Hindu individuals.

During the marriage the protesters chanted slogans to convince President Zardari to take further steps towards legalizing Hindu marriages.

Sapna Devi, one of the protesters revealed her union of marriage of 17 years yet she had no legal proof of it. In her case if her husband were to pass away she would not even be able to claim property that rightly belongs to her because there are no legal terms stating they are a union.

The newly wedded couple shared that although their wedding may have been seen as strange or chaotic, they still saw it as a start of a new life for them because they were fighting for change that was very important to their union–something the marriage ceremony itself stood for. So they think it was worth every minute, if it got a point across to the government and media. Padma said that everyone deserved to have such a basic right and they will not stop fighting until they get what they deserve.

Muslim youth pelt rocks at Police in Hyderabad during the 2010 Old City Riots

Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh (CHAKRA) – The ’All India Council of United Muslims’ (MIM) post-communal clashes has led the opposition government in Andhra Pradesh to reveal that Hindu youth in the area are being harassed by the Congress-led state government.  The Congress government has appealed to the police of Andhra Pradesh to go from house to house and pick up Hindu youth.

G. Kishan Reddy, MLA and president of the party state unit has demanded a judicial inquiry into the harassment complaints.  He told reporters that hundreds of innocent Hindu youth associated with any type of Hindu group are being taken away from their homes in the middle of the night by police.

Out of 300 people arrested for the communal riots, 200 were Hindu, the oppostion state chief reported.

Politcal leaders stated that the police including City Police Commissioner AK Khan have become  puppets of the ’All India Council of United Muslims’ (MIM) and thus are targeting the Hindus in particular. Reddy further stated that Hindu families have been vacating their houses in Old City out of fear of police harassment and that the Congress government is doing nothing because of its participation in vote bank politics as a result of pressure from the  ’All India Council of United Muslims’ (MIM).  Hyderabad has very diverse demographic as more than 45%  is Muslim and many areas such a Old City are more than 50%.

The party is holding protests against the state police for the harassment of Hindus, on April 17^th.

Politcal party leaders today approached Meena a widow of Taneja who was stone pelted to death in Mustaidipura by a Muslim mob.  Meena, a mother of three children, all under the age of three, pleaded for the state government to help her gain a job so that she can provide for her young children.

By Antony Thomas