In 1988, Vibhuti Narain Rai published a Hindi novel entitled Shahar Mein Curfew (Curfew in the City). It is a sensitive and touching study of a people in a crumbling inner city locality when curfew is suddenly clamped on them.
Its theme was a 1980 Hindu-Muslim riot in the city of Allahabad, and Rai wrote freely about how religious prejudice in the Hindu dominated police force and provincial administration led to Muslim citizens' being viewed as enemies and thus becoming easy targets of brutality and murder.
