In May 1984, a month long series of religious violence against Muslims occurred in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The violence primarily occurred around Bhiwandi town. It left 146 people dead and over 600 injured. On 17 May 1984, riots broke out in industrial belt from Bombay, Thane, and Bhiwandi. Overall, 278 were killed and 1,118 were left wounded. The increasingly harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric and radical tactics of the Shiv Sena, a Hindutva political party, directly caused the riots. In April 1984, at Chowpatty Beach in Bombay, Bal Thackeray delivered an anti-Muslim speech in which he repeatedly employed the offensive term landya and called Muslims "a cancer."