Officials stand around a bus with a smashed windshield following a riot in Singapore's Little India on December 9. (Reuters)
Eight more Indians were arrested in Singapore on Tuesday on charges of rioting in the Little India part of the country on Sunday. Charges were filed against 24 Indians arrested yesterday. The men face up to seven years in jail plus caning for the hour-long fracas.
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The chargesheet said the men threw pieces of concrete and were "members of an unlawful assembly whose common object was to overawe, by a show of criminal force, police officers in the exercise of their lawful power to maintain law and order at the scene".
The suspects, aged between 22 to 40, looked sombre as the charges were read in Tamil in court by an interpreter.
A crowd of around 400 people set fire to vehicles and clashed with police late on Sunday after a 33-year-old Indian man was hit and killed by a bus.
Several videos posted online showed a crowd of people smashing the windscreen of the bus while the victim remained trapped under the vehicle.
39 people, including police and civil defence staff, were injured in the violence. This was the first major riot in the city-state in more than 40 years.
Little India, a precinct of Indian-origin businesses and eateries, is usually packed with people on Sundays, with many construction workers from Bangladesh and India gathering there to spend their day off.
The violence followed recent signs of tensions between the country's citizens and the growing numbers of migrant workers.
Singapore's foreign ministry said it was working closely with the Indian High Commissioner "to facilitate consular access and support for their nationals, including legal representation".
Two Bangladeshis, another Indian national and a Malaysian also arrested after the riot were released because investigations showed they were not involved.
In a posting on his Facebook page, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reminded Singaporeans that "the vast majority of foreign workers here obey our laws. We must not let this bad incident tarnish our views of workers here. Nor should we condone hateful or xenophobic comments, especially online." He also ordered a probe into the incident.
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