Bengal Ram Navami riots 'pre-planned, orchestrated': Interim report of fact-finding team

An interim report by an inquiry committee, headed by retired Patna High Court Justice L Narsimha Reddy, into the human rights violations during the Ram Navami riots in West Bengal has concluded that the riots were pre-planned, organized, and incited.

The report also highlights that there was a concerted effort to attack the Ram Navami procession and that the police were deployed at some places but went cold once the rioters started pelting stones.

The report adds that the police charged the people who were there only after the rioters forcibly entered residential areas and broke the glass windows of the residents of a particular section who were busy with Ram Navami celebrations.

The inquiry committee led by Justice L Narsimha Reddy was set up after a six-member NGO investigation team, also led by the retired Patna High Court judge, was stopped by the police from visiting violence-hit areas of Hooghly district on the weekend. The team was heading to Serampore and Rishra, but the police stopped them near Konnagar as bans were still imposed in the area. Retired Patna High Court judge L Narasimha Reddy accused the police of being scared of being exposed and claimed that there was no Section 144 CrPC in place despite the police's claims.

The interim report comes in the wake of a series of incidents of communal violence reported in Bengal's Howrah and Hooghly districts on the occasion of Ram Navami from March 30 to April 1. The violence led to central forces being deployed in the three districts of Hooghly, Barrackpore, and Kolkata to assist the state police in maintaining law and order during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations.

Earlier, on Thursday, BJP leader Locket Chatterjee was stopped from visiting her Hooghly Lok Sabha constituency to attend Hanuman Jayanti celebrations due to the ban in the area. The BJP leader claimed that the police labeled her an "outsider."