Dhanbad

Dhanbad : Communal tension once again gripped the entire Topchanchi belt after a community of people pelted stone on Holi revelers. The incident took place on Friday morning at Chitrapur village under Topchanchi block around 40 kilometers from the district headquarter.

Seeing the gravity of situation, all the top district officials including Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Inspector General (Bokaro Range) Superintendent of Police, Sub-divisional Magistrate, DSP (Law and Order) along with other officials rushed on the spot.

A peace committee comprising 10 members from each community has also been constituted to make the situation normal. “Adequate security forces has been deployed in the area to prevent any untoward incident,” said DSP Amit Kumar adding that police has identified some miscreants indulge in the clash.

According to the information, Holi revelers of Chitarpur village took out a procession in the village followed by traditional songs on Friday on the occasion of Holi fest. The procession was targeted by a community of people, while crossing through a mosque located in the village.

“While celebrating the festival, we were passing through a mosque. We were said to stop playing the traditional songs while crossing near the mosque.

We did the same but in the meanwhile stones pelting started from the mosque roof,” said Rajendra Hansda, an injured, who is undergoing treatment at a private nursing home in Dhanbad.

According to villagers, they (Revelers) couldn’t understand, how fast the moment of festival changed into gloomy Holi. “How did it happened difficult to say as we were in rejoicing mood and never thought of such mischief by any community,” said a villager adding that it was a terrifying scene.

Villagers claimed that, the incident was preplanned as stones were already collected and lifted at mosque rooftop to pelt on Holi revelers. “Every year, the Holi procession takes out from the same path but owing the past incident, peoples of minority community intentionally targeted us,” said one of the villagers on condition of anonymity adding that it had been done to irritate the majority community.

Notably, communal tension earlier had prevailed the Topchanchi block on January 13 night, when   a bachelor Part-I student of SSLNT Women’s college Usha Kumari was brutally killed by Arshad alias Munna resident of same village. In reaction of the brutal killing, villagers targeted the Ali market and set ablaze. Since then, more or less tension was continuing in the village.