BOMBAY, Aug. 25 -- The leader of the Bombay section of India's main opposition party was shot dead in a hail of gunfire Thursday during a drive-by attack. Ramdas Nayak, president of Bombay's Bharatiya Janata Party and a municipal lawmaker, was pronounced dead at hospital after suffering multiple bullet wounds, police said. A bodyguard was also killed in the attack. Bombay, which has been the site of increasing factional violence in recent months, was calm late Thursday, but police and paramilitary forces had been deployed in anticipation of revenge attacks. In New Delhi, the federal government called on local officials in Bombay to establish a special investigative task force to look into the murder. Police said Nayak was killed when he was sprayed with more than 50 rounds of ammunition fired from AK-47 assault rifles at short range. The murder was the latest in a rash of violence against elected officials in the state of Maharashtra and its capital Bombay. During the past 12 months, at least three state lawmakers and eight Bombay municipal councilors have been killed or attacked. Response to Nayak's murder was swift, with Bharatiya Janata Party officials calling for a general strike in Bombay to protest the violence. Although Nayak, 53, was not a politician of federal prominence, he was respected by party members throughout the country for his stands against corruption. While police believe the attack may have been another tragic example of communal violence in India, they are not ruling out the possibility that Nayak was targeted by underworld elements angered by his anti- corruption campaign.
The attack on the veteran Bombay politician Thursday morning came just outside of his official residence. Police say two gunmen pulled up beside Nayak and opened fire. A senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) official in New Delhi called the attack a heinous and all too common crime. 'It shows there is no security of life in Bombay,' party official and federal lawmaker Viren Shah said. 'Nayak was a crusader against communal violence and corruption in politics,' Shah said. Senior BJP officials were planning to travel to Bombay Thursday night to investigate Nayak's murder. The pro-Hindu BJP has been the target of a series of violent attacks since it was linked to the demolition of a sacred Muslim mosque in northern India two years ago. The attack on the mosque triggered violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims in various parts of India in early 1993. The sectarian violence, which also spread to Bombay, was linked to a series of bombings that killed more than 300 people in a single morning in March 1993. In 1992, another BJP state lawmaker in Bombay was murdered. Violence has swept through parts of India, particularly in regions where voters are due to go to the polls later this year for local or regional elections. Last week a Congress Party candidate running for local election in northeastern India was hacked to death by a group of people wielding machetes.
