Latest States and territories of India Stories

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Monsoon rains lashed parts of India's east and west on Thursday, taking the death toll from a week of extreme weather to 81 people, but eased over the financial hub of Mumbai after disrupting life for three days. The June-September annual monsoon, key to India's agriculture and economic growth, revived this week after a two-week lull. Most of the latest deaths were in the eastern state of Orissa and western Maharashtra and Gujarat and were due to lightning strikes,...

By Palash Kumar SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - They are the men who care for Kashmir's dead, but the work is slowly killing them. Since an Islamic insurgency broke out in Indian Kashmir in 1989, Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, now in his late 40s, says he has helped perform autopsies on at least 30,000 corpses. Each time a civilian, militant, soldier or policemen dies, Maqbool is called into action, to cut open their bodies while doctors prepare reports on exactly what killed them: a bullet...

By Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of Muslims watched in rapt attention on Saturday night at an old, closely guarded cinema hall in Srinagar, the center of a violent, 16-year Islamist revolt against Indian rule in Kashmir. But it wasn't an anti-India sermon being delivered by an imam in the Muslim-majority state. Instead, weary of the wrangling and conflict over their region, they were watching the premiere of 'Akh Daleel Loolech' (A Love Story), the first...

By Simon DenyerGANGTOK, India -- A group of shaven-headed boys dressed in maroon robes stand nervously under a tree clutching Buddhist texts, waiting their turn to show their mastery of the Tibetan scriptures to a stern-looking monk.A young girl in gray uniform visits the monastery on her way to school and bows to the wrinkled chief lama, sitting on a bench in the morning sun in an ornate embroidered jacket.On the face of it, Buddhism is alive and well in Sikkim, high in the Himalayas between...

HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - Two more Indian states have banned cinema screenings of the controversial "The Da Vinci Code," doubling the number of regions to have passed such orders after protests by minority Christians. Authorities in southern Andhra Pradesh state and Meghalaya in the Christian-dominated northeast blocked the film late on Thursday. Two other states, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, had earlier banned the film. The Andhra Pradesh government said many groups, including Christian...

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - At least 30 people were hurt in clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, witnesses and police said. Police official B.C. Modi said hundreds of people were involved in the fighting, and that most of the injuries were caused by stones or burning missiles. The violence in Ahmedabad follows Hindu-Muslim riots in Vadodara city, also in Gujarat state, early this month which killed six people and left scores...

CHANDIGARH, India (Reuters) - India's northern state of Punjab banned the release of the controversial movie "The Da Vinci Code," fearing violence by Christians opposed to the film, officials said on Friday. "State intelligence has reported the likelihood of violence in some parts of the state following the release of the movie," Punjab Home Secretary B.C. Gupta said. Earlier this week, the mainly Christian state of Nagaland in the remote northeast banned the best-selling book on which...

By Palash Kumar SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed on Wednesday to Kashmiri militants in Pakistan to "come home," at the same time telling his troops to be more humane as he pressed forward with peace talks. Despite some of the tightest security in years in one of the world's most militarized cities, Islamist rebels set off five grenades in the summer capital, Srinagar, injuring at least 19 civilians and nine policemen. None of the attacks were...

By Bappa MajumdarKOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Three years ago, 16-year-old Jagari Baske vanished from a remote village in the Indian state of West Bengal.But unlike most girls her age who suddenly flee their homes in the country's conservative countryside, she was not eloping with a boyfriend opposed by her family.Instead, Baske ran away to join Maoist rebels who claim to be fighting for the rights of the rural dispossessed but who have been responsible for a wave of killings this year as they...

By Shailendra Bhatnagar MEERUT, India (Reuters) - Police used canes on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of protesters in a northern Indian town where at least 51 people were killed in a fire at a consumer goods fair. Angry residents of Meerut, where the incident occurred late on Monday afternoon, chanted slogans against the police and local slogans, charging that they had failed to prevent the disaster or deal with its aftermath. More than 24 hours after the inferno, many people said they...