Gunmen fatally shot a senior Hindu nationalist in western Gujarat state on Wednesday, raising fears of revenge attacks in a region where Hindu-Muslim violence killed more than 1,000 people last year.
Haren Pandya, a leader of a paramilitary Hindu nationalist group and a member of India's governing party, was shot by two assailants in Gujarat state's largest city of Ahmadabad, said Police Commissioner K.R. Kaushik.
He said police suspect the assailants were riding on a motorcycle and fired at Pandya as he was returning to his car from his morning walk in a park.
"He is no more," said Venkiah Naidu, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat. Members of the party said they would organize a statewide strike on Friday to mourn Pandya's death.
Immediately, shops started closing, roads were deserted and riot police went to neighborhoods where Hindus and Muslims live near each other in Ahmadabad and other cities, said Director General of Police K. Chakrovorthy.
Police said they feared violence would break out among followers of Pandya, a popular former home minister in the state government, and a prominent member of a group that warns Hindus they are endangered by Muslims.
Some 10,000 people gathered at Vadialal Sarabhai Hospital and many chanted mourning wails of "Hail, God Ram" after Pandya's death was announced.
The killers have not been identified.
Pandya had criticized the state's top elected official, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, for his handling of last year's Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat and was then denied a chance to run for election in the state assembly.
Some riot victims, however, had also said Pandya had helped incite rioters in the Paldi neighborhood of Ahmadabad.
Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which also governs India, won the December elections in a landslide without the votes of Muslims, the country's largest religious minority.
Wednesday's attack was similar to one in December, when two men on a motorcycle shot another Hindu nationalist leader, Dr. Jaideep Patel, general secretary of the World Hindu Council, as he rode in his car. Patel survived the attack. At least two other World Hindu Council leaders have been shot at since the riots.
Hindu nationalist groups had been accused by human rights groups of organizing the burning of Muslim neighborhoods in retaliation for a Muslim mob attack on a train car carrying Hindu activists.
Pandya was a senior leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Corps, which holds training camps for Hindus on how to fight against Muslims, who are India's largest religious minority.