A villager and a constable were injured in two days of clashes in Gopinathpur town in Jharkhand‘s Pakur, bordering Bengal, over the alleged slaughter of a prohibited animal in public during Bakrid on Monday.
Sources put the number of injured people at six in the flare-up, which was ignited in Gopinathpur after some from another community objected to the alleged slaughter.
Soon, hundreds from Kristonagar, a village across a canal in Bengal, stormed into Gopinathpur to target those who had protested the slaughter. This set off an chain of stone-pelting between the two sides, police said. Later, local sources said crew bombs were hurled, shots fired and houses torched in a spiral that continued on Tuesday.
Security forces faced challenges in driving the hundreds of attackers back into Bengal. “A mob of around 500 from Kristonagar in Bengal’s Dhulian came to Gopinathpur and torched one house. They continued hurling bombs and firing from across the canal. A constable suffered minor injuries in their attack,” the Pakur SP said.