Mobs have rampaged across an Indian town, leaving 12 people dead and buildings in flames, after a court declared a quasi-religious sect leader guilty of raping two of his followers, according to officials.
Security forces used water cannons in an attempt to disperse the crowd as more than 15,000 paramilitary troops and police officers were deployed in the town of Panchkula, near Chandigarh.
The violence has left at least 12 dead and more than 100 injured, according to VK Bansal, chief medical officer at the state-run Panchkula Civil Hospital.
Mobs set fire to government buildings and attacked police and TV journalists, smashing the windscreens of media vans and breaking broadcast equipment.
The special court had announced a guilty verdict after hearing closing arguments in the 15-year-old case against the guru, who calls himself Saint Dr Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insaan.
Ram Rahim Singh – who had denied raping the two women at his ashram in 2002 – was taken into custody and is to be held in a jail in the nearby town of Rohtak in Haryana state until his sentencing hearing on Monday, prosecutors said.
Panchkula administrators had feared that a guilty verdict would trigger violence among the tens of thousands of followers who had camped overnight awaiting the verdict.
Violence also broke out in several places across the neighbouring states of Haryana and Punjab, police said. Railway stations in the towns of Malout and Balluana were ablaze, and two coaches of an empty train parked in New Delhi's Anand Vihar station were also set on fire.
Angry mobs attacked police in the town of Sirsa, where the guru's ashram is located, according to local police.
The guru's Dera Sacha Sauda sect claims to have 50 million followers and campaigns for vegetarianism and against drug addiction. It has also taken up social causes such as organising the weddings of poor couples.
Such sects have huge followings in India, and it is not unusual for leaders to have small, heavily armed private militias protecting them.
When the guru left his ashram in Sirsa for the hearing, he was accompanied by a 100-vehicle convoy.
Police had erected heavy metal barricades topped with barbed wire along main roads in Panchkula, a quiet residential suburb of Chandigarh, which is the common capital of Haryana and Punjab states.
Soldiers plan to march through the streets later to project a sense of security, officials said.
Authorities ordered internet and mobile phone services shut down across Haryana and Punjab as a security precaution.
Train services were cancelled through the area, leading to delays across northern India, and schools and colleges were closed.
The case was tried in a special court run by India's top agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Such cases have prompted public violence in the past.
Clashes in 2007 between Dera Sacha Sauda followers and members of the Sikh faith left at least three people dead in northern India.
In 2014, six people were killed when followers of another religious leader, guru Rampal, fought pitched battles with police who were attempting to arrest him for contempt of court after he repeatedly failed to appear in court in connection with a murder trial.
In a televised appeal on Thursday, Ram Rahim Singh had asked his supporters not to resort to violence, but some said they would not tolerate a verdict that went against their leader.
