New Delhi, India — India’s top court handed on Saturday a huge victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party by awarding Hindus control of a bitterly disputed holy site that has sparked deadly sectarian violence.

India had stepped up security nationwide ahead of the decision and Modi called for calm, fearing the final ruling on an issue that has been a focal point of Hindu-Muslim tensions for decades could again trigger unrest.

The Supreme Court ruled that the site in Ayodhya in northern India, where Hindu mobs destroyed a 460-year-old mosque in 1992, must be handed over to a trust to oversee the construction of a Hindu temple, subject to conditions.

A separate piece of land in Ayodhya would be given over to Muslim groups to build a new mosque, the court ruled in a historic judgement aimed at ending a bitter and legal wrangle dating back decades.

Thousands of extra personnel including riot police were deployed and schools closed in and around the northern city of Ayodhya, centre of the thorny dispute, and elsewhere.

In Ayodhya gatherings of people were banned and barricades were erected on roads leading to the Supreme Court building in New Delhi with officials and volunteers scouring social media for inflammatory posts in Facebook’s biggest market.