Terrified Muslims prisoners in own homes

Muslims in India’s western state of Gujarat were today still too frightened to leave their homes or return to those they fled, fearing more attacks from Hindus after five days of mob violence.

As the death toll rose to 499 yesterday after another 14 people were killed the violence spread beyond the borders of Gujarat.

Police said a Muslim seller was stabbed to death while followers of both faiths threw rocks at each other in Aligarh, a city with a history of Muslim-Hindu violence in the central state of Uttar Pradesh.

Some 2,000 paramilitary troops were sent to the city and a curfew imposed to prevent further clashes.

Muslims began the wave of violence that has gripped Gujarat since last Wednesday, when a group of them attacked a trainload of Hindu nationalists and set it on fire. The 58 deaths provoked a retaliatory rampage by Hindus.

Most of those killed since then have been Muslims, many burned alive by vengeful Hindus. Yesterday authorities said the violence was subsiding in Gujarat, although another 13 people died.

In one town, Deodhar, four Muslims were burned alive Sunday and police shot dead two of the Hindu crowd attacking them.

Rioting and looting occurred in three villages in the Kheda district, and police shot dead four people while three others died in fights. Mobs also set fire to shops and trucks on a main road at Bhavnagar.

In Ahmadabad, the city of 3.5 million that saw most of the bloodshed, a curfew was lifted in some neighbourhoods but many Muslims were still too frightened to leave or return to their homes. Instead, they sent frantic text messages on their mobile phones to friends and relatives.

Elsewhere in Ahmadabad, the staff and students of the Indian Institute of Management, one of India’s most prestigious universities, held a peace rally yesterday that was disrupted by Hindu activists who burned placards.

‘‘I cannot say the situation is normal, but the situation is returning to normalcy,’’ said Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

‘‘Deaths have come down in Ahmadabad. The government cannot be lenient with the rioters,’’ he said in a TV interview.

Modi had earlier been heavily criticised for sympathising with the Hindu mobs and delaying effective police and army deployment.