At around 2am  on Tuesday, many Mumbai residents were woken up by the beep of a text message from the city police. “Please don't believe in rumours, situation is peaceful and normal,” it said.

Though many who received the text weren't sure exactly it was about, the message was intended to dispel anxiety spreading through the city that a confrontation between Muslim bikers celebrating Eid-e-Milad on Sunday night and Hindu residents in the Lalbaug neighbourhood was flaring up into a larger conflagration.

Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria had confirmed that the confrontation was being treated as a communal incident, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

The paper said that the violence started at around 6.30 on Sunday evening, when a rash motorcyclist brushed up against a woman near a market. A crowd gathered around the biker and assaulted him. The Express report said:
“Around two hours later, bikers who were reportedly driving on the wrong side of the road were challenged by a mob of men at the Bharat Mata cinema junction in Lalbaug. While some fled, eye witnesses said the mob stood waiting at the junction and then began to stop and assault bikers who had been part of the Eid-e-Milad procession, identifying them by their clothing, skull caps or the flags tied to their bikes.”

At least one vehicle was set afire.

The Mumbai Mirror said that the violence was fanned by false information circulating on social media. Messages exaggerating the severity of the assaults were being passed around, as were fake pictures.

But the Maharashtra State Minority Commission claimed in a letter to the Mumbai police on Monday that that the attacks in Lalbaug and nearby areas were actually the result of a conspiracy. “The visual evidence available shows that the incidents in Parel, Byculla, Dadar and Worli were pre-planned,” the commission’s chairman, Munaf Hakim wrote. “The visual evidence clearly shows that a mob emerged from these localities and stopped cars and motorcyles and assaulted people.”

The police have registered cases of rioting against “unidentified people” in three police stations, the Mumbai police control room confirmed.

Some Twitter users complained that the midnight police message had the effect of increasing anxiety, rather than subduing it.