NY-based advocacy body condemns Khammam killings

New York, July 31 (UNI) Indian Muslim Council in the United States, an advocacy group based on nearby Long Island, has condemned the police firing on demonstrators who had sought land distribution to the poor in Mudugonda in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh in India.

The firing resulted in the deaths of several protesters and injuries to dozens more.

The use of lethal force without warning to disperse the demonstrators was deplorable, the group said. This pattern of unwarranted killings of innocent people is shocking and must be stopped immediately.

In the recent past, similar incidents of police brutality included the killings of the fleeing worshipers after the bomb blast in the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, according to a statement issued by the group.

It demanded the establishment of a nonpartisan oversight body under the purview of the National Human Rights Commission to monitor the civil rights situation in Andhra Pradesh. It also demanded an independent inquiry into the Khammam incident.

''Indian police must learn how to bring law and order without killing,'' Rasheed Ahmed, president of IMC-USA, said in the statement. ''In absence of accountable and transparent law and order or good governance, it is conceivable that the worsening caste, class and communal relations could undermine the nation's progress.

UNI