Junagadh:

Police had to resort to at least 3 rounds of tear-gas shelling and detain over half a dozen protesters including local Congress MLA Jawahar Chavda today to control a mob which had jammed the Junagadh Somnath highway in Vanthali town of Junagadh district as part of a bandh call today to protest the alleged illegal sand mining from the bed of river Ozat.

The bandh call evoked wide response as all the markets in the municipality town and the marketing yard remained closed. The local traders had also extended support to the bandh call.

The protesters alleged that one of their leaders and RTI activist Nayan Kalola was allegedly kidnapped and attacked by alleged goons of sand-mafia late last night.

Collector Junagadh Saurabh Parghi told media persons here that more than 5000 people had assembled on the highway and when despite all the attempts to pursue them peacefully failed, police had to resort to tear gas shelling. 3 rounds of tear gas shelling was done. Nine people including MLA Chavda were detained from the spot.

He said that the Gujarat high court had earlier given judgement in favour of the sand contractor so the administration could not stop the sand mining.

The collector said that looking at the situation today the sand mining has been suspended for now. The police was also investigating he incident of attack over activist Kalola.

Meanwhile, the protesters have given a memorandum addressed to the Chief Minister to the administration in which an ultimatum of group suicide in the collector office on June 29 has been given if the sand mafias were not taken to task and sand mining in the river was not stopped.

DeshGujarat