Indian guru convicted of rape revered by millions

The millions of followers of the flashy Indian guru consider him the embodiment of God on Earth.

So when he was convicted of rape Friday, tens of thousands of supporters responded with fury, setting off riots that left more than two dozen dead and buses, trains and buildings set on fire. Police said calm was restored on Saturday.

When he appears in a “darshan,” or audience, once a week at his ashram in Haryana state’s Sirsa town, the guru of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, who calls himself Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan, makes his followers weep and clap and flatten themselves to the ground at the sight of him. The sect claims as many as 50 million followers.

Calm returns after 30 die in India riots over guru verdict

Security forces on Saturday patrolled the streets of a north Indian state where rampaging mobs left at least 30 people dead and more than 250 others injured, after a court declared a quasi-religious sect leader guilty of raping two of his followers.

Authorities lifted the curfew in the town of Panchkula, the main trouble spot, after the night passed relatively peacefully and the area was cleared of protesters, said police officer Pradeep Kumar.

On Friday, mobs set fire to government buildings and attacked police and TV journalists in the town, smashing the windshields of news vans and breaking broadcast equipment.

Death toll at 26 inmates from latest Brazil prison violence

Twenty-six inmates were killed in eruptions of violence inside two prisons in northern Brazil, officials said Sunday as they quelled the latest in a string of jail disturbances across the country in which more than 100 people died within two weeks.

The state security office for Rio Grande do Norte state had reported earlier in the day that there were 27 deaths, but later lowered that by one. It also said all bodies had now been counted.

At least 56 inmates killed in prison riot in northern Brazil

An attack by members of one crime gang on rival inmates touched off a riot at a prison in the northern state of Amazonas, leaving at least 56 dead, including several who were beheaded or dismembered in the worst bloodshed at a Brazilian prison since 1992.

Authorities said the riot that raged from Sunday afternoon into Monday morning grew out of a fight between two of the country's biggest crime gangs over control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil.