Kandhamal and other areas of the eastern state of Orissa have been plagued by Hindu-Christian violence since the holy man and four other people were shot dead by unidentified killers.

“We issued shoot-on-sight orders in the wake of large-scale violence in curfew-bound areas of Kandhamal,” district administrator Satyabrata Sahu said, adding that anti-riot police and paramilitary troopers had been rushed to the area.

The orders were issued after mobs armed with sticks and other crude weapons defied the curfew, staging arson and other attacks, Sahu said.

Police have blamed the death of the holy man, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, and the others on Maoist guerrillas.

However, hardline Hindus accuse minority Christians of responsibility for the killings in Kandhamal, 300 kilometers (180 miles) southwest of the state capital Bhubaneswar.

The death toll in clashes since Saraswati’s murder is seven, including four men in a gunbattle in Kandhamal, Chief Minister Navin Patnaik told the state legislature.

The Press Trust of India quoted state officials as saying the toll had hit nine.

Among those killed have been a woman working at an orphanage who was burnt to death when the Christian-run facility was torched by a Hindu mob.

Saraswati campaigned against what he branded as the “forced” conversion of low-caste Hindus to Christianity.

Radical Hindus accuse missionaries of converting tribals and Dalits — the name adopted by “untouchables,” who still face discrimination from the higher castes — through pressure or by offering lures such as free education.

Meanwhile, a national body of bishops has asked 25,000 Catholic-run schools and colleges to close Friday to protest the violence in Orissa.

The state is where Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were burnt alive in 1999, for which a Hindu man is serving life in jail.

Sectarian clashes erupt periodically in India where only 2.3 percent of the more than 1.1 billion population are practicing Christians.

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