India riots after guru dies in Austria

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-25 19:27

NEW DELHI -- Rioters torched four coaches of a passenger train in Jalandhar district of the northern Indian state of Punjab Monday, after a Sikh guru was killed in an attack upon a temple in the Austrian capital of Vienna Sunday.

Television cameras are set up opposite the house where a Sikh temple is located in Vienna May 24, 2009. [Agencies]

Tensions rose in many parts of Punjab after news arrived that a top leader of the Dera Sachh Khand faction of the Sikh religion was killed by six gunmen in the temple in Vienna.

Armed with sticks, swords, bricks and stones, protestors of the Dera Sachhkand faction who are from the Dalit or low caste Sikh community, swarmed into the streets of Jalandhar, Phagwara, Hoshiarpur and Nawanshahr towns of Punjab, said police.

Authorities have imposed a curfew in Jalandhar and the Indian army troopers were deployed in the spots of high tension, said local media reports.

"The curfew has been imposed in the city late Sunday night to prevent further violence in the city," said a police official in a telephonic interview with Xinhua.

News reports said one of gurus, the 56-year-old Sant Rama Nand who was second in command of the Dera Sachkhand faction, has died of injuries in a hospital in Vienna, while the condition of the second wounded guru, the 66-year-old Sant Niranjan Dass who is the chief of the faction, was described to be stable.