Indian police arrested a firebrand politician yesterday for inciting violence against migrant workers in India’s financial capital, sparking a violent rampage through the city by his followers.
Police arrested Raj Thackeray, the founder of the hardline Maharashtra Reconstruction Party, as he met with party activists on the outskirts of the city, Mumbai police chief Hassan Gafoor said.
Thackeray has repeatedly advocated violence against migrant workers, whom he accuses of taking jobs that should be given to locals.
Gafoor said Thackeray would be charged later yesterday with rioting and inciting violence.
On Sunday dozens of his supporters attacked students from northern India who had traveled to Mumbai on the west coast of India to apply for jobs on the railways.
After Thackeray’s arrest, party activists smashed at least 35 taxis and set ablaze a government toll booth in Mumbai. The also torched four buses in the nearby city of Pune. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Some 200 activists were detained, police officer Bala Samant said. There was a heavy police presence across the city.
Thackeray has made his name as a xenophobic, rabble-rousing politician championing the Marathi language and the rights of locals in Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital. Some 37 percent of Mumbai’s 18 million people are migrants drawn to the city’s bright lights seeking jobs.
Yesterday’s arrest was Thackeray’s second in eight months for violence against migrants. Critics say Thackeray does not have popular backing, but hopes to drum up support ahead of state elections next year.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS