Bangladeshi author leaves Indian city after riots

By Bappa Majumdar

KOLKATA, India, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has left her home in the Indian state of West Bengal after her presence helped spark riots in its capital, Kolkata, earlier in the week.

Nasreen, who criticises the use of religion as an oppressive force, is hated by many radical Muslims. Protests against her -- and other protests over the killing of villagers opposed to West Bengal's government -- sparked riots in Kolkata on Wednesday.

Nasreen left late on Thursday for India's western state of Rajasthan, officials said.

At least 50 people were injured on Wednesday in Kolkata after the protests against Nasreen, as well as the killings of villagers blamed on supporters of the communist-led state government in a battle over using farming land for industry.

"She told us that she was leaving for Jaipur by a late afternoon flight and we had no objections," Gautam Mohan Chakraborty, police chief in Kolkata, said.

Some radical Muslims hate Nasreen for saying Islam and other religions oppress women. Muslim clerics issued a "death warrant" against her in August.

Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had "deliberately and maliciously" hurt Muslims' religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel "Lajja", or "Shame", which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus.

At the time, thousands of radical Muslims protested against her, demanding that she be killed for blasphemy, and some have continued to threaten her life ever since.

Nasreen -- sometimes spelled "Nasrin" -- was born into a Muslim family in Bangladesh, a conservative, predominantly Islamic country.

The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought in 1994.