At least six explosions rocked the railway network in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, during the evening rush hour on Tuesday, officials from the state-run railway told the Press Trust of India. Officials said at least 40 people died in the blasts and hundreds were injured, and the country has been put on high alert.
Seven tourists were killed and 35 people injured on Tuesday in a series of grenade attacks targeting holiday areas in the main city of revolt-hit Indian Kashmir, police said. In the bloodiest of the attacks blamed on Islamic separatist rebels, six tourists, including five women, were killed and 15 people wounded.
India’s new nuclear-capable Agni III missile failed in its first test-firing over the weekend because it was unable to reach its target, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said. The Defence Ministry had initially declared Sunday’s test of India’s longest-range missile a success, but it plunged into the ocean in the Bay of Bengal, short of its target.
Large tracts of India’s western financial hub of Mumbai were under water on Wednesday as the weather bureau warned further heavy rains were on the way and the death toll from the monsoon deluge rose to nine. The deaths brought to at least 234 the number who have been killed across India since the arrival of the monsoon in May.
Asia may be swamping the world with its cheap exports, but the region as a whole offers a huge market for nuclear reactors and technology, driven by the fast-expanding, fuel-deficient economies of India and China. South Korea, 40% dependent on nuclear power, has been pushing the development of the industry over the last three decades.
Hard-line Muslims in southern India have launched a campaign to dissuade youths from watching too much World Cup action, saying they had "gone mad" over football. "Wherever you go, you see [youths] wearing jerseys of various teams. It’s like idol worship, which our religion doesn’t promote in any form," said Sattar Pathallur, secretary of the Sunni Students Federation.
An earthquake measuring 5,5 on the Richter scale struck India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were badly hit by the December 2004 tsunami, an official said on Wednesday. ”The intensity of the earthquake was moderate. It was recorded in the Nicobar Islands this evening,” an official at the Indian Meteorological Department said.
At least 29 people were killed in lightning strikes across India’s western Maharashtra state, it was reported on Tuesday. State officials said the deaths were reported as heavy storms lashed the several areas in Maharashtra in the last three days.
An Indian man who spits out 1 000-digit memorised numbers in reverse order has warned that speed-dial features on cellphones and other shortcuts are turning people into ”mental slobs”. Nishant Kasibhatia was named Indian with the sharpest memory in the latest edition of the Limca Book of Records on Thursday.
Floods caused by summer monsoon rains displaced about 66 000 people in India’s north-east, while heavy rains disrupted traffic in eastern India, officials said on Friday. In north-eastern Assam state, floodwaters from the Brahmaputra river had inundated about 13 000ha of land, the state government said.
India’s Supreme Court has upheld an order by a state government asking US biotech giant Monsanto’s Indian arm to cut the price of its genetically-modified Bt Cotton seeds, reports said on Tuesday. The southern state of Andhra Pradesh had last month asked Mahyco Monsanto not to charge more than 750 rupees ($16) for 450g of cotton seeds.
The official death toll from lightning strikes and powerful storms rose to 76 on Friday as annual summer monsoon rains tore through India ahead of schedule, authorities said. Seventeen more deaths were reported from late on Thursday night in three Indian states on top of 58 people who died earlier.
Lightning storms and monsoon rains lashing parts of India have killed at least 28 people and wrought havoc in the country’s commercial capital Mumbai, officials and witnesses said on Thursday. Strong winds with speeds of about 100kph, lightning and heavy rains killed at least 18 people and injured 21 in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh overnight, police said.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) said on Wednesday it would do everything possible to ensure South African stars Nicky Boje and Herschelle Gibbs could tour India without fear of arrest in a match-fixing case. Dave Richardson, head of the ICC’s cricket operations, said the body would try to ensure the duo would not be detained by Indian police over the allegations.
India’s biggest distiller, the United Breweries Group, said on Monday it had dropped plans to buy French champagne group Taittinger as ”local groups” had stepped in with a new offer. According to French newspaper Les Echos, Belgian businessman Albert Frere is considering re-entering the bidding.
At least three tourists were killed and seven wounded on Thursday when a bomb planted by suspected Islamic rebels blew up a tourist bus in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, police said. The attack came minutes after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ended a meeting in Indian Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar.
Indian troops sealed off large parts of Kashmir’s summer capital following random grenade attacks and murders ahead of a visit on Wednesday by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Combat troops backed up commandos and border guards in Srinagar, where residents in several districts found themselves corralled into ”sanitised zones” on Tuesday.
Lal Bihari made countless rounds of police and government offices, but to no avail. Finally he decided to contest elections to draw attention to his problem: he had been declared officially dead. It took Bihari 16 years to get the government to recognise that he was in fact still alive. Relatives had him falsely proclaimed dead in order to seize his property.
Indian eunuchs have started issuing their own photo-identity cards in a battle for business with ”fake” transsexuals who have muscled in on their begging operations. Eunuchs say many men are dressing up as women and are involved in small-time crime and use more aggressive tactics to collect cash.
A spurned Indian suitor blew himself up at the wedding of the woman who rejected him, killing himself and injuring the groom and four other people, police said on Saturday. Police said the electrician blew himself up by pressing a switch in his shoe when the bride and groom were taking their vows in the Hindu ceremony.
A Catholic group on Tuesday called on Christians to starve themselves to death in protest at the release of <i>The Da Vinci Code</i> at cinemas in India, as others burned copies of the novel. The Catholic Secular Forum said it hoped thousand of people would attend a protest on Wednesday in Mumbai to burn effigies of Dan Brown, the author of the best-selling novel.
India’s ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi was set for a landslide victory on Monday in a by-election aimed at bringing her back to Parliament after she resigned to calm a political storm. But sizzling temperatures kept people indoors and only 40% of some one-million registered voters turned out in her home constituency of Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh state.
A four-year-old Indian child who ran 65km in seven hours last week was on Monday banned by worried welfare officials from running marathons. The child welfare department of the eastern state of Orissa announced the ban following a medical report that Budhia Singh was ”undernourished, anaemic and under cardiological stress”.
International advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi has secured the marketing rights for Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar for -million, officials and media said on Thursday. Iconix, the newly formed marketing branch of Saatchi, signed Tendulkar, one of the sport’s leading batsmen, after his 10-year contract with the US-based WorldTel expired last year.
Cheered by thousands, a four-year-old boy dubbed ”India’s Forrest Gump” who was nearly sold by his impoverished mother ran 65km on Tuesday to enter the country’s foremost record book. Budhia Singh had planned to run 70km, but doctors stopped him after 65km when he showed signs of extreme exhaustion.
Billboards dotting New Delhi are exhorting city residents to imagine a future made up of tall buildings and sky trains that will take the Indian capital from ”walled city to world city”. The phrase ”world-class city” is increasingly on the lips of city officials too, on a massive drive to tidy the capital in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2010.
At least 51 people were killed on Thursday when an overcrowded bus taking them to a wedding skidded off the road and slid into a pond in north-east India, police said. "We have extricated 51 bodies so far. There could be some more people in the pond and divers are at work," a police official told Agence France-Presse.
Lawyers need no longer address Supreme Court judges with phrases like "My Lord" and "Your Lordship," the Bar Council of India has decided, calling the terms "relics of the colonial past". Supreme Court and high court judges can now be called "Your Honour", while in lower courts presiding officers may be called "sir" or its equivalent in local languages, the Indian media reported on Thursday.
Kissing in public has just gotten 10 times more expensive for couples in India’s capital, who face fines of 500 rupees ($11) if they are caught making "illegal use" of public spaces. New Delhi’s authorities found a fine of 50 rupees ($1,1) levied under a 1936 law was too little to deter couples from stealing kisses, the <i>Asian Age</i> reported.
England’s stand-in captain Andrew Strauss limped his way to 74 as the tourists finally tasted victory in the sixth one-day match against India on Wednesday. The Middlesex opener, leading England for the first time in place of the rested Andrew Flintoff, retired hurt with leg cramps in the 31st over before the tourists surpassed India’s modest 223 with 44 deliveries to spare.
Angry locals on Tuesday accused authorities of negligence over a fire which engulfed a trade fair Meerut in India, killing 100 people and leaving survivors battling for their lives. Police used batons to drive back hundreds of distraught and angry residents who massed outside the cordoned-off fairgrounds where the blaze swept through crowded tents on Monday night.
At least 100 people were killed on Monday when a fire swept through large tents packed with shoppers at a trade fair in north India, police said. ”At least 100 people are dead,” Rajiv Sabarwal, police chief of Meerut, 80km north of New Delhi, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Witnesses said bodies were charred beyond recognition and had been scattered throughout the stalls.