1,500 Hindu activists arrested in Ayodhya

LUCKNOW: Police in the northern Indian pilgrimage town of Ayodhya have arrested some 1,500 hardline Hindu activists for violating a ban on assembling there, officials said. 

The activists were campaigning to build a temple over the ruins of a razed mosque, an official said yesterday. 

Senior police official Kailash Nath Dwivedi said activists of the regional Shiv Sena (Army of the god Shiva) party had been banned from organising a convention of the devotees of another Hindu god Ram at Ayodhya. 

“The arrests began on Friday morning as the Shiv Sainiks were trying to break the ban,” he said, adding that about 1,500 of them had been detained. 

Most of the activists from the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is situated, had begun to assemble in Ayodhya on Thursday, Dwivedi said. 

Slogans like: “Ram, we will come and construct the temple,” rent the air as the police rounded up the Shiv Sainiks, witnesses said. – AFP