BHUBANESWAR/ NEW DELHI, Oct 3 Police have arrested four people for the alleged rape of a nun during Hindu-Christian clashes in eastern India that have left 33 dead since August, a senior official said on Friday.

The nun was reportedly assaulted on Aug 25, days after the murder of a Hindu priest Swami Laxamananda Saraswati and four of his followers on Aug 23.

“Four people have been arrested in connection with this shameful act,” Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told reporters.

Separately, Kandhamal Superintendent of Police Praveen Kumar told the Press Trust of India that the “woman was medically examined and the report received by us suggests the possibility of rape”. The arrests followed reports of fresh clashes and arson late on Thursday in Boudh district adjoining Kandhamal.

“We have sent fresh security reinforcements to Kandhamal and Boudh districts,” Orissa police chief Manmohan Praharaj said.

Officials on Friday said the death toll in the clashes had risen to 33 with one more death overnight.

At the root of the violence are long-standing accusations by hardline Hindus that missionaries bribe poor tribals and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity by offering free education and healthcare.

CHRISTIANN LEADERS Christian leaders in India accuse Hindu nationalist groups of deliberately targeting Christians in eastern India to support their political agenda and shore up their support base.

“(There is) a hidden agenda to (make) the entirety of Orissa into a Hindu state,” said Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar in Orissa, where most of the violence has been concentrated.

Cheenath compared the violence to the slaughter of over 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002.

He said that hardliners were “following the Modi style”, referring to the state's Chief Minister Narendra Modi from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who has been accused of giving Hindu mobs a free run to carry out the carnage.

Orissa police say they have arrested more than 300 people over the clashes, including local leaders of the BJP, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Hindu nationalist groups have denied their involvement.

While over 4,000 federal police have been deployed in Orissa, Christian leaders and human rights groups say the violence has not been brought under control, and called on the state government, run by Hindu nationalists, to do more.

“The state government has not rooted out the violence - that is quite disconcerting,” a spokesman for Amnesty International said.

“The people in the relief camps who wanted to return have been told they have to re-convert to Hinduism. That should be taken very seriously by the state government.”

Cheenath said Hindu activists are trying to scare Christians into leaving the camps by throwing bombs nearby, aiming to forcibly reconvert them to Hinduism once they are outside. The All India Christian Council has listed assaults against Christians it says were carried out since August, including murder, rape, and attacks on churches and schools.

“We were not impressed by the reaction of the state government,” said A.M. Chinnappa, Archbishop of Madras-Mylapore.

Pope Benedict has condemned the attacks and Roman Catholic bishops have urged the European Union to treat persecution of Christians as a humanitarian emergency.

A BJP spokesman in Orissa blamed clashes on the murder of a prominent Hindu missionary belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and a vocal opponent of Christian proselytising.

“Police failure to arrest the criminals who killed Swamiji and others has angered the local people,” the spokesman said.

Christians account for 2.3 per cent of India's billion-plus Hindu majority population.— Agencies