Shamli, in western Uttar Pradesh, was among the areas seared by riots in 2013
After a tense weekend which saw the police clashing with thousands of residents, the Shamli district in western Uttar Pradesh is striving to reconfigure to normal. On Friday, a group of Muslim clerics who were travelling on a train to neighbouring Saharanpur were pushed around by a mob of men.
The next day, around 2,000 Muslims then protested on the train tracks, accusing the local police of failing to help the clerics. The demonstration, which lasted over an hour, turned violent and some protesters and policemen were injured. The police has registered a case against 2,000 protesters, including a state lawmaker from the ruling Samajwadi Party. Nahid Hasan has been listed damaging rail property and disrupting train services, according to news agency PTI.
None of the men who roughed up the clerics have been arrested as yet.
"The situation is completely normal, you will notice that all the shops are open today, just like any other normal day," said Pramod Kumar, the District Magistrate. Some of those who joined the protest were brought in by trucks, he said, adding that "three-four police vehicles" were damaged over the weekend.
Shamli, in western Uttar Pradesh, was among the areas seared by riots in 2013, the worst communal violence in a decade in India's largest state; 60 people were killed and nearly 40,000 were left homeless.
The delicate balance in the region was tested this weekend by a series of WhatsApp messages which called for violence against Muslims; some tweets used the hashtag GodhraAgain to invoke the attack on a train which triggered the communal riots of 2002 in Gujarat.
Some of the most inflammatory messages came from the handle of Amitesh Singh whose account (now deleted) claimed that he was a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha member in Pune.