Policemen outside the district hospital in Ratnagiri on Tuesday. (above) Police beat up a villager during Monday’s protest. (PTI)

Mumbai, April 19: Curfew was clamped in the town closest to the Jaitapur nuclear plant site amid a Shiv Sena bandh today, a day after a protester died in alleged police firing during demonstrations against the project.

The curfew in Ratnagiri, the main town in the district by the same name and around 60km from Jaitapur, was imposed after a mob of 200 descended at the hospital where the body of yesterday’s alleged firing victim, Tabrez Sahekar, had been kept, collector Madhukar Gaikwad said. The protesters rejected the post-mortem and demanded the procedure be carried out in the presence of the members of the rights panel.

But Madban and Sakhri Nate, yesterday’s flashpoints and villages to be affected by the project, were largely peaceful today.

“Some people tried to disturb the post-mortem at the (Ratnagiri district) hospital. While they were driven away, there were incidents of tyre burning and stone pelting in Ratnagiri town, after which a curfew was imposed. We will review the situation tomorrow and then decide whether to lift it,” Gaikwad said.

Superintendent of police Pradeep Raskar described the demand for a fresh post-mortem as “unjustified”.

“They were making unjustified demands like calling the human rights commission to conduct the post-mortem. The doctors have conducted a post-mortem successfully. The relatives can now claim the body,” said Raskar, who had claimed yesterday that his force “had to fire in the air” after being attacked by the protesters.

The officer said the 60-odd protesters, including Sena MLA Rajan Salvi who led the group, held yesterday were still in police custody.

Some demonstrators from Madbe had damaged machinery brought to build a compound wall for the nuclear project. Some of them were arrested but as they were being led through neighbouring Sakhri Nate, another group attacked the cops escorting them and torched a police van. The local police station was also attacked, officers said.

The villagers near Jaitapur have refused to give land to the project as they fear the plant will wreak environmental damage. Their fears have deepened after the quake-triggered crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant.

The police claimed there were no major incidents today. “Five companies of the SRPF (special reserve police force) and forces from surrounding districts have been deployed. There have been instances of burning tyres and rasta roko in some parts but no incidents of firing by the police in any part of the district,” Raskar said.

In Mumbai, the unrest continued to rock the Maharashtra Assembly. Sena legislators, not satisfied with the Congress-NCP government’s order for a magisterial probe into the firing, demanded a judicial inquiry.

But state home minister R.R. Patil, who had claimed yesterday that some constables were also injured in the clashes with the anti-project demonstrators, said the inquiry would also find out whether the attacks on the site and the Nate police station were “politically motivated and part of a pre-planned conspiracy”.

But one of Patil’s cabinet colleagues didn’t wait. Revenue minister Narayan Rane, who had crossed over to the Congress from the Sena, told a TV channel that his former party had “hatched a conspiracy” to attack the site. Rane hails from the Konkan region, which includes Ratnagiri, and has been locked in a turf war with the Sena.