SANJELI (Dist Dahod), Aug 18: While curfew was relaxed for 12 hours on Tuesday in Sanjeli, which had erupted with communal violence on Independence Day, the administration is at a loss to explain the lack of vigilance that led to the violence. Deputy superintendent of police B.D. Valvai, put in charge of security in the town, had deserted his post on August 14 night without informing superiors.A company of 30 policemen had been deployed exclusively for Sanjeli, considering that a Janmashtami fair, attended by over 20,000 people, was to be held there. However, when the violence erupted - at the fair - there were only 10 policemen and 17 State Reserve Police jawans in the town, most of the policemen having been sent to Dahod for the Independence Day function. All they could do was keep on firing in the air as the rioting continued.This after the administration being warned by intelligence reports, especially in the context of violence in nearby Randhikpur a little more than a month ago. In fact the Muslim boys who had eloped with two Hindu girls of Randhikpur, leading to violence in that town, were from Sanjeli.District collector Elias Ibrahim Kalashva and district superintendent of police K.L.N. Rao do not deny having had the intelligence reports. Nor do they deny that Valvai had deserted his post. ``He has much to explain, and this has been ordered by the home minister himself,'' they said.Official sources said that on August 11-12 in Sanjeli - already on the boil since the Randhikpur elopements and the violence that followed - a group of Muslims who had held a lease for fishing from a pond beat up the new lessee, a Hindu widow. This was the alleged provocation for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's (VHP) August 15 attack.However, V.H. Patel, a VHP office-bearer of the district, denies that the riot was planned. Patel, and two other Hindu activists, Sashi Mahida and Nanubhai Parmar, said when a crowd raising slogans like `Vande Mataram' marched on from the Dr Shilpan R. Joshi Memorial H.S. School, it was stoned near Masjid Falia. This began the riot. (The collector and DSP do not contradict this.)After that Muslim houses and shops were stoned by the rampaging mob, and at least 10 shops were set afire. The mob had also gone for a residence cum prayer home run by a 50-year-old Christian priest, Fr Joe Vas, who has been living in the town for nearly a decade. All the while policemen stood by helplessly, though they were firing into the air.Minister of State for Home Haren Pandya, who is also the minister in charge of the district, has met leaders of both communities and assured them that people who had lost all their property would get Rs 1 lakh in compensation, and those who had suffered severe damages would get Rs 50,000.
