Baskin Robbins outlet in Ahmedabad burnt

AHMEDABAD, May 27: Even as fundamendalist organisations deny any hand in the burning of Pepsi and Coke trucks, the fire seems to have spread. In the biggest incident of its kind so far, a Baskin Robbins ice-cream parlour in Navrangpura was completely burned down by some unidentified youths shouting anti-MNC slogans.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad general-secretary Pravin Togadia has dissociated his organisation from this incident, as he did from the burning of the Pepsi trucks. But he refused to denounce the crime. "A lot of these actions are a result of one’s own convictions. I don’t condone it but I don’t condemn it either," he said. The parlour just off the busy C G Road was attacked at around 12.30 pm late on Tuesday night. Some youths accosted the proprietor Baldev Nagjibhai Desai, questioning his patriotism and asking him why he was selling foreign ice-cream. Meanwhile, five others entered the shop and poured a chemical all over the shop and set it ablaze. By the time fire tenders arrived the shop was totallygutted causing a loss of Rs 15 lakh. Police commissioner Hiralal says: "It is difficult to pin point organisations behind the incident but we are trying to ascertain if it is part of a planned series of acts." He said that 11 miscreants involved in the previous such incidents have been arrested. Meanwhile the ruling BJP has continued to maintain an ambiguous stand on the issue. Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel told reporters in Gandhinagar that his government will treat these incidents as a law and order problem but that his party also stood by its professed stand on swadeshi. A set of questions faxed to Gandhinagar MP L K Advani soliciting his answers on the incidents went unanswered.