An anti-riot jawan keeps vigil in Vadodara on Tuesday. (PTI)

Ahmedabad, May 2: Ashfaq Arab, 21, died today hours after he had got engaged as Vadodara continued to boil.

Clashes that erupted after a 300-year-old dargah was demolished yesterday have claimed five lives in the city so far.

“The anger against the administration is now turning communal. It is unfortunate but it is happening. It is beyond our control. We are unable to restrain our youths,” said Zuber Gopalani, a minority leader in Vadodara.

Ashfaq, a resident of the Wadi locality, was killed instantly when police opened fire at close range around 3 am, his neighbour Abdul Quayyam said. The youth had got engaged last evening.

But the police claim that he was injured in the clashes yesterday.

Union minister of state for home Sri Prakash Jaiswal, who arrived at Vadodara late last evening, has expressed his displeasure over the “callousness” of the administration which pulled down the dargah on the pretext of clearing the way for traffic.

The minority community had wanted the dargah, which Gopalani said exists on the city’s original master plan of 1921, to be declared a heritage structure.

Its demolition sparked a violent resistance, in which about 50 people have been injured. Jaiswal blamed the administration for the violence, saying the civic authorities should have tried to save the 300-year-old structure.

Social activist Teesta Setelvad said in a statement that according to a “compromise” formula worked out between the community leaders and the administration on Sunday, only a part of the shrine was to have been “sacrificed for development”. But the police demolished the whole structure next day and, by the afternoon, “had paved a road over it”.

Incidents of stone-pelting and arson were reported today from curfew-bound Fatehpura and Yakubhara where the Rapid Action Force and state reserve police have been patrolling the streets. Police had to use teargas to disperse crowds that tried to disrupt the funeral processions of those killed yesterday.

Although the police claimed the clashes are not communal, a mob of members of one community set ablaze a cotton godown owned by a member of the other community. Stone pelting was also reported at Nyaya Mandir.

Minority leaders have submitted a memorandum to the minister seeking the dargah’s restoration.

Asked if the dargah could be restored, Vadodara municipal commissioner Rohit Pathak said: “I cannot say anything about it. It is beyond my powers now.”

The anti-encroachment drive has been suspended.