At least 24 killed as police clash with squatters in India

Twenty-four people died in clashes between land squatters and police trying to evict them in a north Indian town on Friday.

Police said their campaign to evict thousands of people squatting on public land in the Hindu temple town of Mathura, 160km southeast of New Delhi, ended in bloodshed as the trespassers opened fire late on Thursday night from treetops, killing two policemen.

Officials said some 80 people, including 30 policemen, were critically injured in the clashes and some 400 others have been arrested on charges of inciting violence, during which a cooking gas cylinder exploded, killing 11 people.

“We knew they had firearms, but we did not expect them to fire at us,” state police chief Javed Ahmed said. They appeared to be well trained in the use of arms, he added.

The face-off had been building for two years, during which thousands of people occupied a 280-acre plot of government land in town and began asking the local authorities to erect facilities like toilets, dispensaries and schools in the area.

The squatters claimed they belonged to a sect that modelled itself on the Indian Republican Army led by the revolutionary Subhash Chander Bose to fight the British during the second World War before Indian independence in 1947.

Bose raised his army with assistance from Hitler and the Japanese but died in 1945 in a mysterious plane crash in Formosa (now Taiwan) and is widely revered across India.

Over months, the squatters proliferated, turning the area into a shantytown of makeshift tents and thatched and mud huts.

In April, the state high court ordered the squatters’ eviction, but they refused to leave, surrounding their encampment with barbed wires and sentry posts manned by groups armed with sticks and stones.

On Thursday, a 30-member police contingent, deployed to oversee the eviction process, was attacked and it retreated, leaving behind two dead personnel.

Police then sent in a 500-strong force that fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the area, but once again met with stiff resistance in clashes lasting nearly three hours.

Some protesters were reported to have set their thatched huts alight in order to block the advancing police.

Early on Friday morning police claimed to have cleared the area and also seized 170 rifles and 40 crude home-made revolvers from the area.

In postings on social media, the protesters claimed to be social and political revolutionaries whose demands included abolition of elections and cheaper fuel. They also wanted the posts of Indian president and prime minister done away with.

Such land grabs of public parks and vacant government plots are common across India, encouraged by local politicians for whom these squatters then become dedicated vote banks after they are provided with official identity cards.

It becomes difficult to evict these enclaves peacefully and many end up becoming permanent settlements.