2nd day of violent protests over India atomic plant

MUMBAI: Mobs attacked a hospital and blocked a highway in western India on Tuesday in a second day of violent protests against a planned nuclear power plant, after a protester was shot dead a day earlier.

The renewed violence prompted police to ban large public gatherings and political rallies, local television channels reported, with anger seething over the proposed power station amid Japan's nuclear emergency.

A furious crowd targeted a hospital in Ratnagiri town in Maharashtra state, while state transport buses were pelted with stones and a district highway road blocked with burning tyres, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

The Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party called a shutdown in Ratnagiri town, 350 kilometres (220 miles) south of state capital Mumbai, television channels said.

"The situation is calm and under control," a police official at the Ratnagiri police control room said, asking not to be identified.

Anger has been brewing in the area since national environment minister Jairam Ramesh last week ruled out a "rethink" on the planned six-reactor, 9,900-megawatt facility in Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district.

On Monday police shot a man dead during clashes with protesters, later saying they had "no choice" but to fire live bullets at the crowd. Demonstrators set a police station ablaze after the killing, and at least 20 were arrested.

The power plant is to be constructed with technical help from the French energy giant Areva. But environmental campaigners argue the location is prone to earthquakes, while local people who are dependent on fishing and farming say the plant will rob them of their livelihoods and nuclear waste could pollute the soil and sea.

Nuclear industry insiders have also cast doubt on India's ability to deal with a crisis on the scale of that faced by Japan at its Fukushima Daiichi plant after a devastating earthquake and tsunami last month.

Anti-nuclear activists had been planning further protests on Sunday in Maharashtra state to demand that the nuclear power plant be scrapped.(AFP)