Curfew relaxed for 5 hours in violence-hit Saharanpur

Curfew was today relaxed for five hours in the violence-hit city of Saharanpur as the situation was gradually returning to normal.

"Keeping in view the peaceful situation, curfew has been relaxed for five hours today. If the situation remains stable, then we will relax curfew in the entire district from 10 am to 5 pm tomorrow," Saharanpur District Magistrate Sandhya Tiwari said.

"Today curfew has been relaxed from 8:30 am till 1:30 pm in the new city. People are shopping for daily needs as normalcy was returning to the city," she said. However, in the old town curfew will be relaxed from 2 pm to 7 pm, she said.

Tiwari said the situation in the district is fast approaching normalcy. Curfew was clamped on Saturday in the wake of clashes between two communities over a land dispute in which three persons were killed and 34 injured.

165 shops and handcarts and 42 vehicles were set ablaze in the violence. A total of 22 FIRs have been registered and 76 people have been arrested so far in connection with the violence.