The state home department will probe whether Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Mus-limeen (MIM) leader and legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi had any role in the Dhule riots, which took place in January this year, leaving six dead and 100 injured.
Home minister R.R. Patil on Monday informed the legislative Assembly that the government will probe to find out if Mr Owaisi was involved or linked with the Dhule riots. Owaisi was arrested by the Hyderabad police in January for making a hate speech. The home minister was replying to queries related to the Dhule riots during the question hour.
Opposition leader Eknath Khadse had questioned whether there was a link between the Dhule riots and the Hyderabad blasts. He asked whether it was true that Imran, a suspected Indian Mujahideen operative and his associates, halted near Dhule for three and a half hours before the riots took place.
The Dhule riots erupted on January 6 after an altercation between two groups at a restaurant on the issue of a bill payment. Around 98 locals, 17 police officers and 112 police constables were injured in the riots. A firing was also ordered which left six people dead. Six policemen were already suspended for allegedly indulging in vandalism during the communal riots.
The home minister said, “A one-member commission under the chairmanship of retired justice of Bombay high court Shrikant Malte has been appointed to probe the communal riots. The committee will probe into all the aspects within a period of three months. A new police beat will come up near the fish market in Dhule and local authorities will be asked to shift scrap dealers outside the district.”
Reading out a litany of riot instances in the past that had erupted in the district, he said that Dhule has a history of riots. The first riot took place in Dhule was in 1895. Since then riots took place in 1990, 1992, 2008, 2010, 2012 and the same was repeated this year too.