NEW DELHI, June 5: India´s government on Sunday said it would not hold any more talks with the country´s leading yoga guru whose anti-corruption protest in the capital was crushed by police in a morning raid.
Police used tear gas and batons early Sunday to disperse thousands of followers of television yoga star Swami Ramdev who were camping in New Delhi to protest against graft.[break]
Ramdev, who was detained in the melee that left 53 injured, had spent days negotiating with the government on his demands, including the death penalty for corrupt public figures and the repatriation of money in foreign tax havens.
"There is nothing left to discuss (with Ramdev). On what issue we will talk? Whatever talks had to happen have already happened," Tourism Minister Subodhkant Sahay, who was involved in negotiations, told reporters.
Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal, who was also involved in talks with Ramdev, said the police crackdown had the backing of the government and the ruling Congress party.
"No such action takes place without 100 percent unity in the government and the party," he said Sunday, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Ramdev, who has the backing of the main opposition political party and many who sympathise with his campaign after a string of scandals, has said his protest will continue.
Indian police break up Baba Ramdev´s hunger strike
NEW DELHI, June 5: Indian police firing tear gas stormed a New Delhi camp Sunday to evict a mass protest against corruption by a famous yoga guru and thousands of his followers, sparking a melee that left dozens injured.
Opposition parties and anti-graft campaigners accused the government of resorting to heavy-handed tactics to put down the protest, which came after a damaging series of corruption revelations at high levels of power.[break]
Police also used batons in their early-hours raid on a vast tent in the centre of the capital where Swami Baba Ramdev, a television yoga star, had begun a hunger strike on Saturday.
"We had given permission for only 5,000 people to attend his yoga camp but 50,000 turned up. We had not given any permission for a public agitation," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP.
Ramdev was detained by police and later flew out of Delhi heading for his residence in the town of Haridwar in the foothills of the Himalayas, from where he runs a vast yoga empire encompassing television shows and healing centres.
"Don´t bring any politics into this. The kind of treatment needed to be meted out to a fraud has been meted out to him," a leading figure from the ruling Congress party, Digvijay Singh, told reporters.
Television pictures showed Ramdev´s followers attempting to shield him as police moved in on Sunday morning.
"Around 30 people and 23 policemen were injured. No one has been seriously hurt or hospitalised and they were sent off after first aid," area deputy police chief Aslam Khan told AFP.
"The policemen received injuries from stones, flower pots and fire extinguishers thrown at them by the people there," she told AFP from the now empty site of the protest, where personal possessions littered the floor.
The saffron-robed guru had piled pressure on the scandal-tainted government over corruption after beginning a fast to protest so-called "black money", cash from bribes or other illegal transactions in overseas accounts.
He had demanded the government accept all of his demands to tackle the problem, including introducing the death penalty for corrupt officials and withdrawing large-denomination bank notes used in illicit cash deals.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh´s administration had attempted to talk him out of the "fast unto death", nervous that his campaign could spiral into a mass challenge to the government´s authority.
Anger over corruption is high across the country after a string of high-profile scandals, including a telecoms licence scam that might have cost the country up to $39 billion and has seen a minister arrested.
Singh sent a succession of ministers to negotiate with Ramdev, leading to criticism from some commentators that the government was appeasing a man with views far outside the political mainstream.
The sudden police raid on Sunday morning in full view of India´s media, which have been covering every twist in the protest, left some questioning the sudden change in tactics.
"It was badly mishandled and it will have a negative impact on the government," M.J. Akbar, a columnist and political commentator as well as a former Congress party MP, told AFP.
"This smacks of incompetent governance and a complete absence of understanding of the political consequences. It seems the government has gone soft in the brain," he added.
Ramdev is popular among millions of Indians who watch his daily televised yoga sessions and he has strong backing from the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and other right-wing Hindu nationalist groups.
"The BJP strongly condemns the police action initiated at the PM´s behest to break up a peaceful and non-violent campaign against corruption," BJP president Nitin Gadkari said in a hastily convened press conference.
"BJP activists will hold a 24-hour protest across the nation in towns and villages to protest what has happened," Gadkari added, accusing the government of "fascist tendencies".
In April, 73-year-old anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare also went on hunger strike to force the government to include activists in the drafting of a new anti-corruption law.
Anupama Jha, the India director for anti-corruption lobby group Transparency International, said the police raid "shows how rattled the government was by the campaign".
"It will only strengthen civil society´s resolve to take up the campaign in a more determined manner," Jha said.
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