Authorities believe Bangladesh-based Islamic extremists may have been behind a pair of bombings that tore through a popular family restaurant and an outdoor arena in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Saturday, killing at least 42 people, Indian officials said on Sunday. The attacks were the latest in a series of bombings to hit India in the past year.
Three explosions within minutes, one at a street-side food stall and two in an amusement park, killed at least 34 people in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Saturday, police and officials said. More than 50 people were wounded in the blasts in a city with a history of communal violence.
Hundreds of snakes, forced out of their pits by flood waters, have entered villagers’ homes in eastern India, creating panic and adding to the torment caused by monsoon flooding, officials said on Friday. About 1Â 800 people have been killed — scores of them due to snake bites — since July when swollen rivers burst their banks.
The snow-preserved body of an Indian soldier was given to his family on Tuesday, nearly 40 years after he died in a plane crash in the Himalayas, an official said. Soldiers discovered the frozen bodies of Mahendranath Phukan and two other victims half-buried in snow on a glacier at an altitude of 5 300m.
Former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and South African all-rounder Lance Klusener have signed to play in an unofficial Indian Twenty20 league, organisers said on Monday. The Pakistani trio of batsman Mohammad Yousuf, all-rounder Abdul Razzaq and batsman Imran Farhat, plus South Africa spinner Nicky Boje, have also joined the league.
Perched high above the Himalayan town of Leh, a warren of traditional mud-brick houses squats by the ruins of the royal palace and a monastery, appearing to grow out of the mountainside. These homes in the capital of India’s Buddhist Ladakh region, which have stood for centuries, are regarded as some of the best remaining examples of urban Tibetan-style architecture.
New Delhi’s stray dogs lead a difficult life. But if it was up to one city councillor, they would find themselves in more hot water — soup, to be precise. Shipping the thousands of strays to Korea, where dog meat is widely consumed in soup, was one of the more outlandish ideas proposed at a city-council meeting to deal with the problem.
India celebrated six decades as an independent nation on Wednesday, but the prime minister warned against over-confidence from the booming economy and laid out tough challenges ahead. In a speech from the ramparts of the capital’s 17th-century Red Fort, Singh lauded India’s democracy as its greatest achievement.
A 12-year-old Indian girl was beaten and then hanged by her mother for demanding she be sent to school, a media report said on Tuesday. The girl was beaten unconscious with a rolling pin by her mother in a village in Jodhpur district in the western desert state of Rajasthan this month.
Villagers returned home to ruins as flood waters continued to recede on Monday but the toll from the annual monsoon flooding across South Asia rose to 2Â 300, officials said. Tens of thousands are still housed in shelters while millions more are dependent on food and medical aid.
Ranbir Rai Handa was just 14 years old when he was pitched into the madness of partition, forced to flee his hometown of Lahore on a train bound from newly independent Pakistan to India. What he saw when he arrived in Amritsar on August 14 1947 still keeps him awake at night.
Millions of malnourished Indian children are vulnerable to disease after South Asia’s worst floods in years, officials and aid groups said on Wednesday, calling for urgent assistance. Hundreds of United Nations Children’s Fund workers rushed to immunise and supply rehydration fluid sachets to children in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar.
The toll from floods across South Asia soared to nearly 1 900 on Tuesday as water levels in the region’s swollen rivers started to recede. Aid workers struggled to deliver supplies to some of the 28-million people displaced across India, Bangladesh and Nepal by the worst monsoon-triggered flooding in decades.
Answering the call of nature over a pit of manure with no flush water in sight and learning how to churn butter may not be everyone’s idea of a great holiday. But in India’s "Little Tibet", the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh, a pioneering scheme to offer tourists the authentic tastes of mountain life is taking off — and could hold the key to preserving a fragile ecosystem.
Packed hospitals in eastern India struggled to cope with people suffering waterborne diseases on Saturday and marooned villagers clashed with police as some of the worst floods in living memory ravaged South Asia. More than 250 people have died over the past 11 days after torrential monsoon rains that caused rivers to burst their banks.
Relief teams in India, Bangladesh and Nepal on Thursday battled to reach about 18-million people stranded in massive flooding, with food, clean drinking water and medicines in short supply. More than 1 100 people have died across South Asia since the start of the annual monsoon season in mid-June.
The army was called out for rescue operations on Sunday as more than a million people were marooned in north-east India, which has been hit by raging floods, officials said. The latest deaths took to 15 the number of people killed in flood-related accidents in the past week in Assam and adjoining Meghalaya.
A newborn Indian baby found abandoned with 26 stab wounds has survived, doctors said on Wednesday, despite a cracked skull and exposed intestines. The baby boy, who doctors said was aged between one and two days, was discovered soaked in blood at a garbage dump in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Tuesday, they said.
India’s first female President, Pratibha Patil, savoured her election win on Sunday as supporters hailed the victory as a step forward for women. The 72-year-old lawyer defeated Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat by a landslide on Saturday.
Brazil, India and South Africa aim to boost business between the fast-growing emerging economies that are also key players in now deadlocked global trade talks, Brazil’s foreign minister said on Tuesday. Brazil’s Celso Amorim said after talks with his counterparts in New Delhi that the nations agreed to raise trade flows 50% by the end of the decade.
Zimbabwe, who have been out of Test cricket since January 2006, have dropped out of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) test rankings list. Zimbabwe do not figure in the ICC’s annual list released on Monday because they have played two Tests fewer than the minimum of 10 required for inclusion in the table.
An Indian television channel is looking out for good singers in the one place that has escaped the prying eyes of reality TV — the bathroom. Bathroom Singer, a new singing contest on the Filmy entertainment channel, will zero in on an untrained performer who’s good at singing in the shower.
Twenty-four Indian police officers who had gone missing after a fierce gun battle with Maoist insurgents in the jungles of central India were found dead on Tuesday, a top officer said. The missing men were part of a group of 90 troopers who engaged the rebels for two hours in a hilly forest on Monday in the Dantewada district in the state of Chhattisgarh.
Former Indian prime minister Chandra Shekhar, who was suffering from cancer, passed away in New Delhi on July 8. He was 80. Shekhar breathed his last at 8.45am local time at the Apollo Hospital in the Indian capital where he was being treated for bone cancer for the past three months, doctors said.
The death toll from this year’s monsoon climbed to 474 on Wednesday as blinding rains lashed eastern India, according to officials and media reports. Two more deaths in the past 24 hours pushed the death toll to 13 in drenched West Bengal, officials said in the state capital, Kolkata, where knee-deep flood waters invaded homes and offices.
Hundreds of angry Kashmiri villagers paraded two Indian soldiers naked through the streets after they were ”caught trying to rape” a 17-year-old girl, witnesses and newspaper reports said on Wednesday. Police said they were investigating the incident, which took place late on Tuesday in Kunan, a village north of Srinagar.
Indian scientists have patented two new tea-based products — a pill and a fizzy drink they hope will give consumers the same pleasure as drinking a freshly brewed cuppa. A four-member team based in the north-eastern state of Assam said their chewable pill and a health drink are now ready to cause a buzz on the world market.
Police in India have charged a three-year-old boy for allegedly leading a group of rioters and firing at security personnel, the toddler’s uncle said on Thursday. The incident dates back to a clash in the eastern state of Bihar between villagers and police in January, when officers were pelted with stones and shot at, Dhruv Kumar Jha said.
A prisoner who went missing from a jail in eastern India for almost 24 hours was found by prison guards snoring on the roof of the jail, officials said on Friday. Raju Gaji (19), arrested for banditry and theft and sent to a jail in Kolkata earlier this month, told police he was bored with the prison routine and wanted to catch up on some sleep.
India has been made a conditional offer to stage a Formula One grand prix in 2009, Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president Suresh Kalmadi said on Thursday. ”We have received a letter in this regard from Bernie Ecclestone, CEO of Formula One. The IOA will be the promoter and the first event will be held in 2009,” he told a news conference.
Red-faced Indian cricket officials resumed a desperate hunt for a national coach on Tuesday after first-choice South African Graham Ford turned down the high-profile job. With Rahul Dravid’s men due to embark on a four-month foreign tour next week, time is running out to find a successor to Greg Chappell.
Claims by terrified villagers that "Bigfoot"-type hairy giants are roaming the jungles of India’s remote north-east have prompted authorities to order an investigation, a local official said. The bizarre sightings have been made in the Garo hills area of Meghalaya state, close to the borders with Bangladesh and Bhutan.