Siliguri, April 9: A proce- ssion of around 1,000 people rallying for Gorkhaland turned violent this morning, forcing police to lathicharge and lob tear gas shells and bringing back memories of another Siliguri street riot six months ago.

At least 25 people, 14 of them policemen, were injured. Four had to be hospitalised.

Witnesses said the trigger for today’s trouble was stones thrown at the police by some youths who may not have been part of the rally by the All-Gorkha Ex-Servicemen’s Morcha.

The association is an affiliate of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which has been spearheading the agitation for a Gorkhaland state for the past five months.

The Morcha has called a bandh in Darjeeling district — to be supported by the Greater Cooch Behar Democratic Party and the Kamtapur Progressive Party, which raise demands for their own separate states once in a while — to protest against the lathicharge on ex-servicemen.

The Darjeeling district administration had refused the association permission to bring out today’s rally, citing an attack on its new office at Darjeeling More yesterday and security concerns.

A bus damaged by the protesters. Telegraph picture

The police allowed vehicles packed with former soldiers from the hills to enter Sukna around 10.30am after repeated requests .

The rallyists were told not to cross Pintail Village . But they defied the orders and marched on.

Requests from district magistrate Rajesh Pandey and superintendent of police Rahul Srivastava fell on deaf ears.

The police stopped the group midway towards Darjeeling More.

Stones came raining in retaliation. The police chased the crowd with batons, burst tear gas shells and threw back some of the brickbats hurled at them. Stones struck a few former jawans, too.

The district magistrate said only 30 per cent of the rallyists were former jawans. “The rest were rowdy elements.”

At one point, the mob grabbed Kurseong subdivisional officer Rakesh Singh.

“We feared he would be lynched,” said Pandey.

Ten persons were arrested for inciting the violence.

“We’ll take the help of video footage to book more culprits,” Pandey said, adding that the arrested former soldiers would be released.

Several elderly ex-servicemen — Jai Bahadur Rai, 65, Dambar Bahadur, 60, B.B. Rai, 80, and Krishna Bahadur Subba, 68 — were injured.

“They suffered fractures and blows on the head and back,” said the Morcha’s Sukna president, Lalit Thapa.

Among the injured were an inspector, three sub-inspectors and an assistant sub-inspector. A stone struck a photojournalist in the eye.

Brigadier (retired) M.K. Gurung, the president of the ex-servicemen’s association, said the rally was peaceful, but turned ugly because of “antisocial elements not known to us”.

In September, rumours of hooliganism by supporters of Indian Idol winner Prashant Tamang had led to street riots in the town, police firing, army intervention and an indefinite curfew.

Tamang, who had then appealed to the people not to indulge in violence from Kathmandu, was caught in the clash backlash today.

He reached Darjeeling from Siliguri late in the night.

The Morcha will start a hunger strike in the hills and the Dooars tomorrow. It is in protest against a convention being planned by the Siliguri civic body to counter the Morcha demand for the inclusion of the town in its new state.