NEW DELHI, April 22: New Delhi has taken strong exception to the widespread criticism and horror expressed by foreign governments and human rights observers of the anti-Muslim pogroms, and the Ministry of External Affairs termed on Monday their comments an “interference” in India’s internal affairs.

“We would like to make clear that India does not appreciate interference in our internal affairs, including the utilisation of the Indian media by foreign leaders as well as by visiting dignitaries to make public statements in order to pander to their domestic lobbies,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao told reporters.

She was reacting specifically to an interview the visiting Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomiojaa gave to The Indian Express on Friday, in which he called the Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat “a matter of great concern.”

“The pictures of carnage are very disturbing,” the minister said. “We are concerned, as we are when something of that nature happens anywhere in the world.” India has lodged a protest with Finland through diplomatic channels, Rao said.

Rao’s remarks coincided with newspaper reports on Monday of at least six Muslim civilians, including women, being shot dead by police at point-blank range.

The reports said 18-year-old Nazimabanu Mehmood Hussain was shot dead at point-blank range by the police in Ahmedabad on Sunday afternoon. The bullet hit the young girl in the forehead. Seconds after she died on the spot, her father, 42-year-old Mehmood Hussain Ibrahimbhai, was killed in a similar fashion.

Four others, who were killed in the police firing, including another woman, were later found to have also been shot at point-blank range, the Indian Express reported. The European Union has dispatched a fact-finding mission to Gujarat where more than 2,000 Muslims are feared to have been killed by rightwing Hindu mobs.

The Express on Monday again quoted a EU report as drawing parallel between Gujarat and Nazi Germany.

It quotes the European Union in a just-finalised declaration as saying that “the carnage in Gujarat was a kind of apartheid ... and has parallells with Germany of the 1930s.”

The declaration, to be made public this week, according to the Express, carries 15 signatures, including those of the ambassadors of Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium.

Rao, when asked if India would react similarly if the UN were to make an adverse comment on the situation, said: “We will make it perfectly clear that the Government of India is taking all the necessary steps to deal with the situation.”