An Insult Grows Into Violence in India; 31 Dead
NEW DELHI — The death toll from sectarian violence in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state increased to 31 Monday as police locked down the area and the prime minister called for calm.
A curfew has been imposed, about 13,000 security officers have been deployed to the area and over 100 people were arrested on charges of inciting violence. Schools and shops were closed Monday after hundreds of villagers reportedly fled their homes Sunday or were evacuated by police.
Tensions were sparked in late August when a teenage Hindu girl complained to her family that she’d been verbally harassed by a Muslim boy, also a teenager, in another village in Muzaffarnagar district, located in the northern part of India’s most populous state, according to local media reports.
The girl’s brother and cousin then allegedly went to the boy’s home and shot him dead, at which point members of his family and others in the Muslim community allegedly beat to death the brother and cousin.