Swift action limits fallout from boys’ fight

Following the clash, senior police officers held a peace meeting with the residents’ welfare association and the local administration on Thursday to explain that the incident was a mere brawl between two boys and not a communal clash.

Those presiding over the meeting advised residents to maintain peace and harmony.

Police said that a Hindu teenager and five friends walked into a community park looking for a Muslim boy. The Muslim boy, police said, had recently become friends with a Hindu girl. Hindu boys are said to have objected to their relationship. On Wednesday, the group went out in search of the Muslim boy but could not find him. Instead, they found his friend, also a Muslim.

When the friend said he did not know where the Muslim teenager they were searching for was, the Hindu boys allegedly beat him up with sticks they were carrying, police said.

They left the park after the attack, “following which the friend went back to his locality and gathered around five Muslim boys to go looking for the Hindu boys’ group,”  Naushad, an eyewitness, said.

“When they reached their houses in the Balmiki-dominated area of the Block E and did not find them there, they began pelting stones at the houses,” said Rajendra Kumar, another eyewitness.

Meanwhile, police rushed in and the boys fled the scene.

“There is no communal clash. Only a fight between two boys for personal reasons was reported. We have detained two persons in connection with the fight and others are being traced,”  R A Sanjeev, DCP (Northeast), said.