Daussa/Bayana, May 24
At least 15 persons were killed today and scores wounded when the police opened fire on a mob that set ablaze a police station in Dausa district of Rajasthan as the Gujjars agitation for the Scheduled Tribe status spread to new areas of the state.

Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bhainsala said he was ready to talk to the government but said the agitation would continue till their demand was met.

The police opened fire when a mob of Gujjars, protesting police firing on their community members in Bayana in Bharatpur district yesterday and pressing for the ST status, stormed the police station at Sikendra in Dausa district after overpowering the policemen and set it on fire, SHO Bane Singh said.

With this, the death count in two days of firing and clashes between Gujjars and the police mounted to 31 of whom 16 lost their lives yesterday.

“The situation is extremely tense and additional police force has been requisitioned to handle the situation,” Bane Singh said. The police had opened fire on Gujjar agitators at Philpura village of Bayana yesterday when they pelted the policemen with stones after teargas shells failed to disperse the protesters. The protesters damaged the railway tracks.

Eight hundred Armymen were deployed today in violence-hit Dhumiria and Karwari villages of Bayana tehsil.

The Gujjars’ stir spread to the new areas with fresh violence erupting at Nimkathana in Sikar district where the protesters torched a roadways bus and damaged three others vehicles, the police said.

The road traffic between Jaipur and Delhi was affected with agitators putting up a blockade at Beheror in Alwar district and stopping trains at the Bandikuin railway station, official reports reaching here said. Prohibitory orders under Section 144 were imposed on eight districts, where there is a sizable Gujjar population, as a precautionary measure.

In Ajmer, the Gujjar Sangarsh Samiti took out a rally and burnt an effigy of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and enforced a bandh in Kishangarh town of the district.

Train services on the Mumbai-Delhi route was disrupted with some of the trains being cancelled and others diverted.

State DGP reached Bayana in an attempt to hold discussions with Bhainsla, who along with thousands of agitators, was squatting at Philpur and claiming they were in possession of seven bodies of Gujjars.

However, Bhainsla, convener of the Gujjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti, told PTI at Kherawadi in Bayana that the agitation would continue till the demand for the ST status for the community was met. He said he was ready to talk to the government.