Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday blamed “outsiders”, and “political and anti-social elements” for the riots that rocked Delhi over the past three days and urged the Union home minister to bring in the army if needed and impose curfew in all violence-hit areas in north-east Delhi.

Speaking in the Assembly, Kejriwal urged people to “reject the politics of hate” and said neither the Hindus nor the Muslims have benefited from the violence. To prove his point, the chief minister read out names of the deceased along with their religion including that of the police and of those injured.

His remarks came at a time when he has been criticised for not intervening in the days since the violence began. On Wednesday, he finally visited some of the stricken areas for the first time.

As many as 27 people have died so far in the riots that occurred in northeast Delhi and over 300 have been injured.

“I want to show who faced losses from the riots. Everyone lost. More than 20 people have died. Veer Bhan died, he was a Hindu. Mohammad Mubarak died, he was a Muslim. Parvesh died, he was a Hindu. Zakir was a Muslim. Rahul Solanki was a Hindu, Mohammad Furqaan a Muslim and Rahul Thakur was a Hindu. Maut toh dono ki ho gayi – Hindu’o ki bhi ho gayi, Musalmano ki bhi ho gayi, aur policewalon ki bhi ho gayi (Hindus, Muslims and policemen – all have died),” Kejriwal said.

After the Assembly session, Kejriwal along with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, and Aam Aadmi Party leaders Sanjay Singh and Gopal Rai met Satish Golcha, special commissioner of police at the office of the DCP in north-east Delhi. After meeting the policemen, the chief minister went to Maujpur and Shiv Vihar to talk to the residents and affected families.

Earlier, addressing the newly elected MLAs in the House for the first time, Kejriwal on Wednesday announced that the Delhi government will give ₹1 crore to martyred head constable Ratan Lal’s family and a job to a next of kin in his administration. “Our own brother, head constable Ratan Lal was martyred not for saving a Hindu or a Muslim. He was martyred for saving the country,” he said.

The chief minister further said that Rahul Solanki had gone to bring milk when he died in the riots. “If you go and tell his mother that ‘don’t worry, we have killed 10 Muslims and taken revenge of your son’s death’, will she care? ” he said.

While explaining to the House that he and all AAP MLAs did everything possible within their powers to restore peace and rescue people in the affected areas, Kejriwal said police deployment, “despite their best efforts”, was “inadequate” on many occasions.

“In my understanding, the police tried a lot to bring the situation under control… But, many times when we were talking to the lower rung police personnel they said they had ‘no orders from above’ on whether to take action or not. Many videos were also viral that some policemen were helping anti-social elements. Action should be taken against them,” the chief minister said.

The chief minister said he was closely monitoring the violence-hit areas and the requirement of doctors and beds to treat the victims, while AAP MLAs and volunteers carried out peace marches. Several MLAs such as Vishesh Ravi of Karol Bagh tied up with local Aman committee members to hold meetings with the residents asking them to be wary of messages and videos on social media and messaging apps.

On Tuesday, Kejriwal attended a meeting called by Union home minister Amit Shah and requested that borders of the Capital be sealed. A day later, Aam Aadmi Party leaders Sanjay Singh and Gopal Rai questioned the Centre for not sealing the borders. The two AAP leaders also questioned Shah for not visiting the riot-hit areas or issuing any statement urging people to maintain peace.

Kejriwal on Wednesday morning also wrote to Shah demanding deployment of the Army and a curfew in all sensitive areas.

The chief minister started his speech by saying the world has been watching two pictures of Delhi over the last three days – one, of the first lady of the United States Melania Trump visiting a Delhi government school and appreciating the happiness curriculum. The other of the riots.

“Today, Delhi’s people have two options – one is to stand united and build a beautiful future for each other irrespective of religion and caste. The second is to kill each other and count the corpses. A modern Delhi cannot be built on the foundation of corpses. It can be built only on the foundation of schools, water, roads, power, and health,” Kejriwal said.

The number of deaths in Delhi violence rose to 32 on Thursday after one of the injured at Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital succumbed to injuries, reported news agency ANI. Two people had earlier died at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital.

There is relative calm in Jafrabad, Maujpur, Chand Bagh and other areas of Northeast Delhi, where violence broke out on Monday and continued till Tuesday evening. Delhi Police and security forces are conducting flag marches in the area to monitor the situation.

All the security personnel are equipped with riot gears and batons during the march. The area is under prohibitory orders till March 24.

This comes after newly appointed Delhi Police Special Commissioner (Law and Order) SN Shrivastava late on Wednesday took stock of the situation in violence-affected areas in North-East district.

Delhi Police have registered 18 FIRs and 106 people have been arrested in connection with the violence in North-East Delhi, reported ANI.

This week’s battles have seen mobs armed with swords, guns and acid raze parts of Northeast Delhi. The clashes, which also left more than 250 injured, were triggered by protests over Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA.

They exploded into brutal violence on Monday and Tuesday, with residents forced to flee their homes after seeing dwellings destroyed and a tyre market set ablaze.

“I appeal to my sisters and brothers of Delhi to maintain peace and brotherhood at all times. It is important… calm and normalcy is restored at the earliest,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on Wednesday.

Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, meanwhile, called for the army to be deployed in the city. The US embassy issued a travel warning advising citizens to exercise caution.

The latest flare-up in violence occurred as US President Donald Trump held talks with PM Modi in Delhi on Tuesday. The visit was not visibly interrupted.

Around 8pm on Tuesday, nearly 18 severely injured victims waited to be shifted from Mustafabad’s Al-Hind Hospital to Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) Hospital. They required urgent treatment at the time.

But two ambulances that were to transport the patients stopped at the Brijpuri T-point. Security teams there had warned them that going any further into the riot-hit area would be a risk. When the drivers asked them to escort them to the hospital just a kilometre away, they allegedly refused.

In the meantime, two patients died.

As the communal clashes in north-east Delhi escalated across the city throughout Tuesday, Al Hind Hospital had received over 50 patients, some of them shot and injured, others injured in stone pelting or assaults. They were one too many for the hospital to handle.

Dr Harjit Singh Bhatti of the Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum said that he was trying to get ambulances to assist doctors at the Al Hind hospital and transfer 10 gunshot victims.

“We were told that the situation is tense and if we wanted to go despite their warnings, the police will take no responsibility for our safety,” said Shiv Ram, a medical attendant, who was in one of the ambulances.

Ram said after trying to negotiate with the police personnel, the ambulance driver tried to reach GTB hospital via alternative routes, but barricades and the tense atmosphere kept delaying them.

The wait continued till late night and frantic calls to drivers was met with replies that they were still reasoning with the police to allow them to pass. Security agencies told them that only government hospital ambulances will be allowed through the barricades.

“We kept getting calls from the hospital administration and we were all trying our level best to reach the injured on time. There have been instances when ambulances get stuck in traffic jams but this was an extraordinary situation. I have never felt this helpless,” said Ram.

While ambulance drivers were trying to find their way, another of their colleagues, a Delhi government Centralised Accident and Trauma Services (CATS) ambulance driver, was beaten up rioters and forced to return.

“We want to help but who will take responsibility if something happens to me?” said a Delhi government ambulance driver, who did not wish to be named.

“It is a pity that courts have to intervene so that patients can avail of basic treatment. After 24 hours of struggle, our team of eight doctors reached Mustafabad around 3pm on Wednesday. Patients, who had suffered injuries yesterday (Tuesday), were looked at again because they did not get proper treatment,” Bhatti said.

Medical staff from other hospitals in the riot-hit north-east Delhi also narrated grim tales of helplessness. A junior doctor at Shastri Park’s Jag Pravesh Chandra Hospital said that on Tuesday evening, a man in his 20s was brought to the hospital with a bullet wound to the face. He had to be taken to GTB Hospital in a private car as their ambulance was surrounded by vandals at Bhajanpura.

“We had to stuff an oxygen cylinder inside the car along with the patient, Aman. We had an attendant and family members. When a patient has sustained such grievous wounds, improperly moving them may cause more damage,” said the junior doctor adding that she later learnt that Aman had succumbed to injuries at the GTB hospital.

A day after a 26-year-old security assistant with the Intelligence Bureau (IB) was allegedly captured by an anti-CAA mob near his home in Khajuri Khas, authorities on Wednesday fished out his body from a clogged drain nearby on being informed by some local women that the rioters had dumped some bodies in it.

The body of Ankit Sharma was identified by his uncle, soon after divers used a rope to pull him out around 11.30am. “He had multiple stab wounds on his body. They even seemed to have stabbed him in his eye,” Sharma’s uncle relative said.

Sharma’s father is an assistant sub-inspector with the Delhi Police and works at the Karol Bagh police station in Central Delhi.

Sharma’s relatives have accused Tahir Hussain, Aam Aadmi Party councillor from Nehru Vihar, of plotting his death at the hands of the mob. “The mob that snatched and killed my brother was operating from Hussain’s house. A mob was pelting stones from the terrace of that building,” Sharma’s brother, Ankur said.

A senior police officer said they were investigating the allegations.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra took to Twitter demanded Hussain’s arrest, sharing a video that showed rioters pelting stones and petrol bombs from the roof of a house that Mishra and local residents said belongs to the leader.

Hussain denied having anything to do with the murder or the riots. “I have come to know from TV reports that I am being blamed for the murder of a man. These are lies and baseless accusations. For our safety, my family and I had moved away from our home on Monday in police presence. There should be an impartial probe into the incident and action should be taken against whoever is found guilty. It is wrong to target me. I and my family have nothing to do with it,” he said.

In a tweet, Delhi chief ministerArvind Kejriwal call the Sharma death a “tragic loss of life”.

Ankur said Ankit had left for work around 8am on Tuesday and returned home around 4.30pm. “He had gone out to see what was happening when Hussain’s men caught him,” alleged Ankur.

His uncle, Sudhir, said Ankur was accompanied by his two friends who too were captured with him. “We have heard that one of them later managed to escape, but the other friend was killed with Ankit,” alleged Sudhir.

A local resident who claimed to be an eyewitness said the three were being taken away by the mob, some other people known to Ankit had tried to rescue them, but were forced to retreat because the mob fired at them.

Around 10 pm, Ankit’s family began visiting different police stations and hospitals in east Delhi to search for him. Ankit’s body was found in the drain on Wednesday morning after some women nearby told the authorities that a mob had dumped some bodies in the drain and then rolled cement-laden sacks on it in a bid to drown it. The authorities then brought in divers to fish out the body. There was no word on his missing friend.

The four-storey house that residents said belonged to the local AAP leader was found deserted and partially burnt on Wednesday. A neighbouring house that belongs to a Hindu was charred.

Bilkis Khatoon frantically moved in and out of her burnt house in north-east Delhi’s Ashok Nagar neighbourhood on Wednesday afternoon, as she kept looking for whatever remained of her belongings.

All the furniture, mattresses, clothes, curtains and electronic appliances had been damaged in a fire – the result of an act of arson by a mob the previous night ; her little bag containing gold jewellery and cash savings, and a cooking gas cylinder had been looted by the rioters, she said.

Her neighbour Parveen elaborated on the sequence of events – how mobs attacked shops and business premises in the Muslim neighbourhood. The soot on the walls bore testimony of it. For Parveen, the search was focussed on one thing – the examination hall admission ticket of her daughter, Arshi, who is to appear in the class 12 board exams.

Around 3 km away in Brijpuri locality, Suresh Kaushik was trying to help a group of fire fighters trying to cool the embers of a burnt four-storey building. That, Kaushik said, was his residence, which he shared with his two siblings. While the siblings had moved out of the neighbourhood on Sunday after hearing about the first round of violence, Kaushik decided to stay back.

“I saw my house being set ablaze by a mob. I still have not been able to go inside to assess the damage. The heat is unbearable,” said Kaushik, standing in knee-deep water that had accumulated outside his house after the fire fighting operation.

Next to it, a private school owned by a Hindu was vandalised and parts of it torched by the same mob, other local residents said.

Over the past three days, large parts of north-east Delhi witnessed widespread violence that started with clashes between supporters of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and groups protesting against it in the Jafrabad-Maujpur road stretch. It later turned into a full-blown communal riot that spread to several districts – the interconnected maze of narrow lanes and on the arterial road connecting the Yamuna embankment with Loni, located on the Delhi-Ghaziabad border.

The violence so far has claimed at least 27 and injured more than 330 people.

On Wednesday, as the police relaxed prohibitory orders barring the public assembly of four or more persons and opened several roads that had been barricaded for the last three days, the scale of the violence became clearer. The trail of damage included mosques, schools, shops, showrooms, vehicles, commercial buildings and residences. These properties had borne the brunt of arson, vandalism and ransacking by armed mobs that rampaged across districts.

The victims were both Hindus and Muslims.

By Wednesday afternoon, even as the situation was visibly under control in areas such as Jafrabad, Maujpur, Kabir Nagar, Kardampuri, Durgapuri Chowk, Jyoti Nagar, Gokalpuri, Brijpuri, Ashok Nagar, Karawal Nagar and Yamuna Vihar, sporadic instances of stone throwing and vandalism were reported from pockets of Mustafabad, Bhajanpura and Shiv Vihar. Delhi police claimed there had been no incident of violence on Wednesday.

In the Shiv Vihar-Johripur area, locals said instances of stone-throwing took place on Wednesday as well. Abdul Majid, a resident of Shiv Vihar, said he noticed men setting fire to a vehicle on Wednesday afternoon. “I was on my terrace; I could see men on the other side burning a vehicle and pelting stones. We asked police forces to escort us to our relative’s house safely and even when they helped us leave our house, the men were walking threateningly towards us and asking the personnel to just move aside for a bit,” he said.

At least two schools in the area were vandalised and burnt along with several cars in a parking lot. Manoj Chandra, a security guard at the Rajdhani Public School, said he was in his living quarters inside the school when he heard the mob approach.

“The mob tried to attack us well. I jumped from the terrace and escaped with my wife and two children. When I came back, I saw they had ransacked my quarters and all my documents were missing,” he said.

“Once it became a full-blown communal matter, it did not matter which group attacked and who were the victims,” said Ashwin Nagar, a resident of Dayalpur, pointing towards a mosque and two Hindu houses on the same alley, torched by the same mob on Tuesday night.

On a 1 km stretch of Loni Road lined by engineering and medical entrance coaching centres and automobile repair centres, all shops had their glass panes shattered, parts of their premises torched and vehicles destroyed. While the neighbourhood facing one carriageway of that road was a Hindu-dominated pockets of Yamuna Vihar, the other was a Muslim-dominated pockets of Chand Bagh.

Although shops and businesses were open after three days, residents remained on the edge throughout the day as information came in of damage inflicted by rioters in neighbourhoods through word of mouth and news outlets. In several north-east Delhi localities on Wednesday, the police, along with officials of the Rapid Action Force, Central Reserve Police Force and Border Security Force, organised flag marches in a show of strength

In some parts, they also encouraged local committees to organise short peace march to ease tension among the residents.

The police on Wednesday released a statement explaining that 18 First Information Reports (FIRs) had been registered and 106 people arrested in connection with the riots in the north-east district.

“We are in the process of identifying the miscreants through investigations of CCTV footage and other strong evidence we have,” said MS Randhawa, Delhi police spokesperson.

Metro services resume

Services were resumed at all the five metro stations —Jafrabad, Maujpur-Babarpur, Gokulpuri, Johri Enclave and Shiv Vihar — on the Pink Line of riot-hit Northeast Delhi on Wednesday morning, officials of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) said.

“Entry and exit gates at all stations have been opened. Normal services have resumed in all stations,” the DMRC announced in a tweet. Services at the five stations were suspended on Monday in view of the violent clashes.