India Deploys Hundreds of Security Forces in Uttar Pradesh

NEW DELHI â€" India deployed hundreds of police and army troops to Uttar Pradesh in northern India on Monday, after weekend confrontations between Hindus and Muslims killed at least 28 people and gravely injured many more, according to the police.

Widespread clashes were sparked by the killing of two Hindu youths last week near the city of Muzaffarnagar, around 80 miles north of New Delhi.

Thousands of farmers gathered on Saturday night to demand justice, and crowds of men then began fighting with knives, sticks, bricks, stones, swords and iron rods. The violence, which villagers on both sides say was initiated by the other party, then spread to surrounding villages.

A local broadcast journalist was shot in the chest while filming the violence, according to a report from his television station, IBN. A police photographer was also killed. Refugees described being ambushed by gangs of armed men and dozens of Muslim families were seen leaving the area on Sunday night, their possessions piled onto carts drawn by horses and oxen.

“We don’t feel safe in this village, where we form less than 10 percent of the population,” one man, Mohammed Haneef, told The Indian Express. He said a group of his relatives had spent 24 hours hiding in fields.

The police have arrested 90 people, Arun Kumar, the state’s deputy police chief, said on Monday.

Among India’s 29 states, Uttar Pradesh has seen the highest number of deaths from religious violence in the past three years â€" 73 killed in 323 outbreaks, according to statistics released by the government. Two thousand such incidents were recorded throughout the country during that period.

One of the worst outbreaks took place in 1992, after a Hindu crowd stormed a mosque â€" which many contend was built on the site of a Hindu temple â€" and demolished it. Thousands of people, most of them Muslims, were killed in that outbreak.

The police have said the explosion of violence this weekend was intensified by a five-minute video clip which was circulated widely on the Internet, falsely presented as footage of the killing of two Hindu youths on August 27. Officials have released statements saying the video was not authentic and was actually filmed years ago in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Fake video clips and doctored photographs â€" easily downloaded on smartphones, which are pervasive even in rural areas â€" were also cited as a cause for a panic that sparked a riot in Mumbai and caused tens of thousands of migrants to return to their homes in northeast India last year. People received files with images purporting to be Muslims killed by angry mobs in India, which officials said were not authentic.

The Indian government embarked on an uneven crackdown on the Internet and text-messaging services, blocking about 250 Web pages and seeking to block the Twitter accounts of a number of journalists and commentators.