An injured man being rushed to hospital in Indore. (Reuters)

Bhopal, July 4: Three persons died in Indore’s sectarian clashes over the Amarnath land controversy today.

The city’s qazi, Ishrat Ali, was roughed up by members of his own community when he refused to endorse a bandh called in reaction to yesterday’s shutdown by the BJP-VHP-Bajrang Dal combine over the land row. By evening, curfew was clamped in 27 areas.

The casualties came along with the death of a Satna jeweller who had set himself ablaze yesterday after he and his family were allegedly beaten up by Bajrang activists enforcing the VHP bandh.

Heeralal Soni, who supported the RSS on the Amarnath row, was thrashed because the shutters of his shop were only half down. The 28-year-old had sustained 85 per cent burns.

But his death did little to calm tempers. A mob pelted police with stones in Indore’s Khajrana area when a victim of yesterday’s violence was being taken for the last rites. Sources said the trouble began when the police tried restricting the funeral procession’s size.

In Khajrana, Pandrinath, Malharganj and Chhatripura, thousands roamed the streets, making a mockery of the curfew that was in force. The Rapid Action Force and the armed policemen could do little.

A group going for Friday prayers had an altercation with members of another community in the Jinsi area, resulting in two hours of stone pelting and hurling of petrol bombs.

Some reports suggested the police had been fired at but Indore collector Rakesh Shrivastava would only say they were “targeted in a few places”.

As the violence increased, so did criticism of the way chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan handled yesterday’s bandh. The Congress accused the BJP regime of giving sensitive posts to “weak” officers who buckled under the “pressure” to go soft on saffron groups.

But residents slammed the Congress, too, saying its elected representatives from Indore had remained “underground” during the past two days of violence.

The tension has mounted ever since VHP and Bajrang Dal activists took out rallies and processions and announced plans to submit written appeals to Indore’s qazis and imams, asking them to persuade the Jammu and Kashmir government to grant the Amarnath land.

But qazi Ishrat wondered how the “followers of a faith in Indore could influence an issue in Jammu and Kashmir”.