Caste tensions between the Dalit and the Jat communities resurfaced in Gohana town of Haryana on Tuesday after the murder of a Dalit youth by unidentified assailants on Monday night.
One person was killed allegedly in police firing as police tried to control thousands of violent Dalit protesters who blocked roads, torched buses and police vehicles, and attacked a police post to protest the murder of the Dalit youth.
Thirty-year-old Dalit youth, Rakesh alias Lara, was murdered by three motorcycle –borne unidentified assailants at a road-side restaurant on Monday night.
His killing is being linked by the Dalits to the prevailing caste tensions between them and the dominant Jat community running over the past two years. It started when a Jat youth, Baljit Siwach, was murdered allegedly by some persons belonging to the Dalit community. Rakesh was one of the accused in the murder   and had been recently acquitted in the case after a CBI inquiry.
The enraged Jat community had torched 50 dalit houses in the Balmiki Colony in Gohana after the murder of Siwach in August 2005. The state government had then ordered a CBI probe into the murder.
On Tuesday, enraged Dalit protesters vented their ire against the police as they hurled stones at them and burnt a police post. Several buses and other private vehicles were also torched on Monday night when the body of Rakesh was brought out of the hospital after post-mortem.
The police were maintaining vigil for any outbreak of caste conflict between the two communities after Tuesday's incidents as tension prevailed in the city falling in Sonepat district.
Additional DGP of  Haryana, V B Singh said here that five additional companies of security personnel had been rushed to the township and prohibitory orders banning the assembly of five or more persons had been promulgated to control the situation. 
He said some persons had been rounded up and police was interrogating them for clues to the murder of Rakesh. Singh remained non-committal about the death of a 60-year-old person allegedly in police firing saying the person was reported to be run over by a vehicle during the protest and was yet to be identified. State Congress president, Phool Chand Mullana has, meanwhile, alleged that the incidents in Gohana were part of a “deep political conspiracy” by vested interests to destabilise communal harmony.