On Diwali night, two brothers in Rajkot battered a man with a wooden log and stabbed him to death because the man’s son had objected to the brothers throwing a lighted firecracker at him a few hours ago. They also stabbed and seriously injured the son.Also on Diwali evening, a resident of a housing society in Ahmedabad fired a few rounds from a weapon, ostensibly to scare away a group of young men and minors who had allegedly attacked him and other society residents with sticks and cricket bats following a dispute over bursting firecrackers.These incidents are among more than 500 recorded across Gujarat on November 8, in which disputes or disagreements over Diwali firecrackers led to serious fights in which people ended up injured and, in some cases like the one in Rajkot, dead.Things have been getting worse over the years.People seem to be on an increasingly shorter fuse, leading to more fights and serious physical assault on Diwali day, the numbers of injured individuals transported to hospital over the last three years suggest.According to data from GVK-EMRI emergency ambulance service (number 108), India’s largest not-for-profit emergency medical service provider, the number of victims of physical assault who required medical transport to reach hospitals across the state went from 323 on Diwali 2024 to 391 on Diwali 2025, to 508 this Diwali.This amounts to an increase of 57% from Diwali 2024 to Diwali 2026.On normal (non-Diwali) days in 2026 so far, the number of ‘108’ services provided in cases of assault has been 204 on average. This is less than half the Diwali day number of 508.Story continues below this adThe GVK-EMRI ‘108’ service publishes this data for all major festivals. The data on Diwali-day violence and assault are not exhaustive, but they can be treated as an indication of the total number of such cases.Among cities, Ahmedabad has led the state in the number of injuries caused by assault on Diwali day for the last three years – reporting 90 such cases on Sunday, up from 79 on Diwali 2025, and 77 in Diwali 2024.Surat reported the next highest number of ‘108’ calls – 45, down from 59 in 2025, but more than the 33 cases reported in 2024.Dahod reported the third highest number of assault injuries at 32 this year, up from 29 in 2025 and 15 in 2024.Story continues below this adDwarka reported just 1 case, while Tapi and the Dangs reported 2 cases each, which is consistent, with minor variations, over the last three years.Overall, a total of 5,934 medical emergencies – including both cases of assault and accidents such as burn and fire injuries – were reported on Diwali Day in Gujarat this year.This number was about 13% more than the average number for non-Diwali days, the GVK-EMRI data showed.ALSO READ | Mumbai vs Chennai pollution: Why Diwali left one coastal city with ‘poor’ airThe number of victims of vehicular trauma in the state this Diwali (1,212) spiked sharply (87%) over the normal-day average of 646 cases.Story continues below this adThe number of non-vehicular emergencies increased 75% over the normal-day average (595) to 1,043 cases.A total of 62 burn injuries were reported across the state on Diwali day, almost the same as Diwali 2025 (58 cases), according to the GVK-EMRI data.The largest number of such cases was in Ahmedabad (13), followed by Surat (12), Kutch and Rajkot (5 each), and Gandhinagar and Vadodara (4 each).Fewer patients reported suffering from breathing problems this Diwali than on normal days – 383 patients required hospitalisation against the daily average of 448.