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Badlapur town in Thane district of Maharashtra was tense following clashes between members of two communities on Sunday.
A bandh called by local Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena units received a good response and commercial establishments in the entire Badlapur-Kulgaon area were shut on Monday.
While there was no loss of life, property worth lakhs was destroyed in arson and stone throwing during the clashes.
Eight people, who were injured, were undergoing treatment at various health facilities in Badlapur, Ulhasnagar and Mumbai.
"The clash was not communal. It was just a clash between two groups of youth over the unwelcome attention a girl was receiving from an overenthusiastic young man," Thane Police Commissioner S M Shingari, who visited the town on Monday, said.
He added, "There was an attempt to give it a communal tone... but timely intervention by the police prevented this from happening.
It all began at a dandiya organised during Navratri. On October 12, a boy from the majority community pursued a girl [name withheld] from the minority community. Harried, she complained to her companions.
This led to an altercation and a knife was brandished. The youth, Arvind Mohite, suffered several stab wounds in the free-for-all that followed.
Tensions were simmering ever since. As if to make matters worse, a shopkeeper was beaten up following an argument between him and a customer at around 2045 IST on Sunday.
Soon, armed youths came out in hundreds and clashed.
When the police asked the mob to disperse, their warnings went unheeded and they opened fire "to quell tensions".
The crowd then pelted stones on the policemen. A BJP worker, Sharad Baban Mhatre, sustained a bullet injury while a policeman, Sunil Toke, suffered serious head injuries in the stone throwing.
Both of them along with the six others were taken to hospitals.
The last time riots took place in this area was in 1984.
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