LUCKNOW, Sept 8: Hundreds of troops have been deployed to quell deadly riots and clashes between Hindus and Muslims sparked by the killing of three villagers who had objected when a young woman was being harassed in northern India.

Police said 19 people were killed, including a broadcast journalist, a police photographer and several people who on Sunday succumbed to injuries received a day earlier when the two groups set upon each other with guns and knives at Kawal village in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The violence quickly spread to neighbouring villages in Muzaffarnagar district on Saturday night.

Times of India reported that 26 people had lost their lives in riots and with more than 40 injured the toll could increase.

“A curfew has been imposed in three riot-hit areas of Muzaffarnagar,” said the head of the state’s home ministry, R.M. Srivastava. “The situation is still very tense, but under control.”

Soldiers were going door to door to search for weapons. A state of high alert was declared for the entire state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of 200 million people.

The clashes broke out on Saturday after thousands of Hindu farmers held a meeting in Kawal to demand justice in the Aug 27 killing of three men who had spoken out when a woman was being verbally harassed.

The state’s minority welfare minister, Mohammad Azam Khan, said some at the meeting gave provocative speeches calling for Muslims to be killed. The farmers were attacked as they were returning home after the meeting, senior police official Arun Kumar said.

“The attack seemed well planned,” Mr Kumar said. “Some were armed with rifles and sharp-edged weapons.”

Gunfire was reported from several areas of the village. Within hours clashes broke out in neighbouring villages, Mr Kumar said.

A leader from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party said tensions had been simmering since the three men were killed on Aug 27 in a tea shop. “Had the killers been arrested, the situation might not have gone out of hand,” Vijay Bahadur Pathak said.

An army contingent of up to 800 was sent to the area on Saturday night, as armed gangs of Jats, a group practicing Hinduism, stormed a mosque and a village with Muslim residents, Mr Srivastava said.

“We had sought assistance of the army last night after we found the violence spreading...to other villages,” he said. “In fact, we were able to bring things under control until fresh violence broke out in (a) village on Sunday morning.”

“I would appeal to all the people there to maintain peace and do not trust or listen to any rumours,” Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav told reporters.

The Jats are demanding the rescinding of charges against members of their community in connection with the communal clash last month in which three people were killed.

Police officer Kumar said tensions were fuelled by an online video purporting to show the killing of two Muslim youths last month.

Uttar Pradesh was at the heart of some of India’s worst communal clashes in December 1992, after a Hindu mob razed the 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya. The government has warned that India is seeing a rise in communal violence, with 451 incidents reported already this year, compared with 410 for all of 2012.

Communal clashes last month left two dead and 22 injured in a village in Bihar state, east of Uttar Pradesh. Outbreaks have also been reported recently in Uttar Pradesh’s district of Shamli, as well as in disputed Kashmir.—Agencies