Situation in Delhi under control: Police

Delhi police spokesman and senior officer Dipendra Pathak has claimed that the situation in Seelampur was under control and additional companies of armed police have been sent to the area to tackle the hoodlums who were trying to take advantage of the situation.

Two persons were killed, including one in police firing, following clashes between angry shopkeepers, their employees and the police and officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in various parts of Delhi.

The officials had gone to seal illegal shops on the directive of the Supreme Court.

"The situation is critical, but under control. We rushed eight companies of the Delhi Armed Police to bring the situation under control," Pathak said.

The situation got out of hand around 1 pm when the crowd started becoming restive. The police initially fired teargas shells, but that did not help and eventually they had to resort to firing in which one person was killed.

Twenty police personnel were also injured in the incident and were rushed to various hospitals in Delhi for treatment.

"As a matter of precaution, the Delhi Metro had suspended its services to Shahdara and Seelampur area from 4 pm and there is no likelyhood of the services being resumed, at least tonight," Anuj Dayal, public relations officer of Delhi Metro told rediff.com. This put thousands of commuters into great difficulty. 

Vijay Goel, former minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and president of the Confederation of All India Traders, said that what happened in Seelampur was unfortunate. "But the writing is on the wall. The traders would not give up their struggle and surrender their livelihood so easily. The Congress government at the Centre and in Delhi should share the blame for today's clashes. Two persons were killed and over 100 injured," Goel told rediff.com.

Goel claimed that the bandh was successful and most of the leading markets in Delhi were closed. But the Connaught Place market functioned as usual exposing the tall claims of Goel and his supporters.

A leading businessman from the Seelampur area who spoke to rediff.com on phone said that what happened on Wednesday could be a trailer of what may happen in the next few days.

"How can they throw us out of our business premises just because someone has approached the courts on wrong grounds. We have been doing our business for two decades from the same place," he said.

A case of rioting was registered against some of the shopkeepers in the Kotla Mubarakpur area of south Delhi.

There were reports of clashes between shop owners and police in the Malviya Nagar as well.

At a number of places, traffic was brought to a standstill by the protestors, and office goers could not reach their destinations in time.