India investigates calls to kill Muslims at Hindu gathering

 Indian police announced on Friday an investigation into repeated calls to kill Muslims made by Hindu extremists during a public gathering.

In a video, verified by AFP, a woman addresses a crowd during a large gathering in early December in the northern Hindu city of Haridwar, encouraging the killing of Muslims.

"Even if only a hundred of us become soldiers and we kill two million of them, we will win," she said. "You will only be able to protect the eternal law (Sanatana Dharma) by insisting on this path."

The lady also called for "praying for Nathuram Godse," the Hindu extremist who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, the hero of India's independence.

The gathering was attended by at least one member of the Indian People's Party (Bharatiya Janata Party) led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi's Hindu nationalist party has been accused since it came to power in 2014 of "encouraging the persecution of Muslims and other minorities", but it denies this.

Muslim lawmaker Asad Al-Din Al-Owaisi said on Twitter that the comments in the video were "a clear case of incitement to genocide."

The Indian government did not make any comment.

At the same rally, Prabodanand Giri, the leader of a small Hindu group often pictured alongside senior members of the prime minister's party, called for a "purge" and urged attendees to "prepare to die or be killed".

"As in Burma, the police, politicians, army and all Hindus in India have to take up arms and carry out this purge. We have no other choice," he said.

A third speaker said in the video that he regretted not killing the former prime minister, a member of the (currently opposition) Congress party Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh head of government.

The Indian People's Party denies its intention to officially transform secular and pluralistic India into a purely Hindu country, but many members of India's Muslim and Christian communities say they have been attacked and threatened since Modi took power.

Police in the state of Uttarakhand, where the rally was organized, told AFP that they were "investigating the case", stressing that they would "take strict measures against the culprits."

Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news