A total of 8,000 preventive arrests were made during last Friday in Mumbai, the financial center of India, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported, quoting Joint Commissioner of Police (law and order) V.N. Deshmukh.
As a result, the local cellphone networks were asked to disable their SMS service during the day to help reduce social unrest. The SMS service in the city was shut down following a directive received from police commissioner M.N. Singh, which blamed malcontents for using the SMS service to arrange illegal demonstrations. Both Orange and BPL Mobile blocked their SMS service from 11.30 am to 6 pm, although it is not clear if MTNL complied with the instruction. No users within the Mumbai license area were able to receive or send SMS's during the day and any attempt got an error message. BPL Mobile did send out a broadcast message to its subscribers warning them of the block however.
There is ethic unrest in the city between Hindus and Muslims over plans to build a Hindu temple on the site of a demolished Muslim Mosque in the holy town of Ayodhya."
Posted to the site on 18th March 2002
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