…On October 30, almost all the shops and establishments of one particular community were attacked, vandalised and burnt down, and 12 persons of the same community done to death. Of these, three were burnt alive in the open. People of the town have expressed the view that if only the V.V. Intermediate College, situated in front of Kaziwada, a locality of the meat-sellers, had not been converted into a temporary jail for the kar sevaks, the riots would not have erupted.

…The people hold that the local MLA and the Municipal Chairman, Rajeshwar Kumar Bansal, is the culprit of the said events. The district administration too cannot escape its share of the blame. For, it agreed to the demand made by Bansal, the Vyapar Mandal and the BJP, that the arrested Kar sevaks could be provided food and breakfast etc., from outside, which only further boosted the morale of the kar sevaks. As a result, the temporary jail was converted into a merry-making camp of the communal zealots who also raised most provocative slogans off and on from inside.

Several-times, the ‘imprisoned’ kar sevaks and the people of Kaziwada also exchanged slogans and brick-batted one another. Some crackers were also fired on the Kar sevaks by the Kaziwada hotheads. But the authorities refused to wake up.

On October 30, the whole market was closed and there was no traffic on the road. There was no worthwhile police force at the gate of the college-turned jail. The car sevaks broke the college furniture, and wielding their legs, etc., as sticks, came out of the gate. There local supporters also collected in large numbers.

The arson had started. It was only 9 in the morning. Shops of a particular community were selectively attacked, ransacked and put ablaze...

It continued for several hours. Yet the police force was conspicuously absent.

The curfew was clamped at about 2.30 pm. But the police was still absent, giving the riot crowds a chance to go on despite curfew. In the night, when there were no street lights, at about one o'clock, shots from guns, rifles, carbines and kattas began to be heard along with the slogans. Screams of women and children rent the air. All this continued for the whole night. Fortunately, however, nothing serious took place...

Next day, on October 31, firing and screams started before it was 9 in the evening. Peace came only after a police jeep announced the imposition of the curfew.

For the common people, however, the curfew brought many... hardships, while the BJP men who had perpetrated the riot, had been minting money in collusion with the police...

(Source: The People's Democracy, New Delhi, 2 December, 1990)