Riots under control in India as death toll reaches 485

Indian Government officials have confirmed that Gujarat is returning to normal after four days of riots that left 485 people …

Indian Government officials have confirmed that Gujarat is returning to normal after four days of riots that left 485 people dead.

Only one incident was reported in the state Bhavnagar town, where mobs set fire to shops and trucks on a highway and clashed with police who opened fire. There were no reports of casualties.

Hindus set fire to Muslim homes in Deodhar village, killing four people, the state police control room said. Two others were killed in subsequent police firing. The village is 150 kilometres (95 miles) northwest of Ahmadabad.

In Gujarat's biggest city, Ahmadabad, home to 3.5 million, authorities lifted a curfew in some parts after at least 195 people were killed between Thursday and Saturday.

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"I cannot say the situation is normal but the situation is returning to normalcy. Deaths have come down in Ahmadabad. The government cannot be lenient with the rioters," Gujarat Chief Minister Mr Narendra Modi said.

On the highway outside Ahmadabad, some shops and road side stalls have reopened.

In Ahmadabad, the staff and students of the Indian Institute of Management, one of India's most prestigious universities, held a peace rally that was disrupted by slogan-shouting Hindu activists, who burned placards and signature boards.

The origins of the violence lie in a Hindu campaign to build a temple in the northern town of Ayodhya on the site of a 16th century mosque that was razed by Hindus in 1992. Most of the people burned in the train in Godhra were returning from Ayodhya.

The former mosque site is being guarded by thousands of police to keep out Hindu fundamentalists, led by the World Hindu Council, who have vowed to begin construction of the temple at the site on March 15.

Police have halted trains, blocked roads and sealed off the city, where only 550 hardcore Hindu activists of the Council now remain, police and council officials said. The rest of the 20,000 who had assembled there last week, helping carve stone pillars for the proposed temple, have left voluntarily.

PA