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An Indian passenger aircraft was diverted on Wednesday after the latest in a string of hoax bomb threats made to airline companies involving the country.The Akasa Air flight, which was flying from India's capital New Delhi to the southern city of Bengaluru, "received a security alert" and the flight was ordered to return as a "precaution".Akasa Air said the captain had followed "all required emergency procedures for a safe landing in Delhi".The flight had 184 people on board, including three infants, the airline said.Another flight, the domestic carrier IndiGo flying from Mumbai to New Delhi, was diverted to Ahmedabad in Gujarat.Zulfiquar Hasan, director-general of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), told the Times of India newspaper that "Indian skies are absolutely safe" and said police were working to identify the culprits."We are confident of tracing all those behind these threat messages and very strict action under law will be taken," Hasan told the newspaper.The Indian Express newspaper reported 12 domestic and international flights have received bomb threats since Monday, including some messages posted on social media.All have been false alarms.India's aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said in a statement that the police had "arrested a minor responsible for issuing bomb threats targeting three flights"."All others responsible for the disruptions will be identified and duly prosecuted," the statement added.Singapore scrambled fighter jets on Tuesday to escort an Air India Express plane after an email warning about a possible bomb on board, the city-state's defence minister said.Two F-15 jets were deployed to escort the aircraft "away from populated areas" before it landed safely at Changi Airport late on Tuesday.Air India also said on Tuesday that one of its planes from New Delhi to Chicago had to make an emergency landing in Canada because of "a security threat posted online".That flight also landed safely at Canada's far northern city of Iqaluit.Canada's armed forces later airlifted the passengers to Chicago, Canada's Minister of Defence Bill Blair said on X.Similar hoaxes were received this week by India's low-cost operator IndiGo regarding two flights that were to take off, to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and to Muscat in Oman, according to Indian media.

Ratan Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who put a staid and sprawling Indian conglomerate on the global stage with a string of high-profile acquisitions, has died, the Tata Group said in a statement late on Wednesday. He was 86.Tata, who ran the conglomerate for more than 20 years as chairman, had been undergoing intensive care in a Mumbai hospital, two sources with direct knowledge of his medical situation told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.After graduating with a degree in architecture at Cornell University, he returned to India and in 1962 began working for the group his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.He worked in several Tata companies, including Telco, now Tata Motors Ltd, as well as Tata Steel Ltd, later making his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at group unit National Radio & Electronics Company.In 1991, he took the helm of the conglomerate when his uncle J.R.D. Tata stepped down - the passing of the baton coming just as India embarked on radical reforms that opened up its economy to the world and ushered in an era of high growth.In one of his first steps, Ratan Tata sought to rein in the power of some heads of Tata Group's companies, enforcing retirement ages, promoting younger people to senior positions and ramping up control over companies.He founded telecommunications firm Tata Teleservices in 1996 and took IT firm Tata Consultancy Services , the group's cash cow, public in 2004.But to grow properly, the group determined it needed to look beyond Indian shores.It "was the quest for growth and changing the ground rules to say that we could grow by acquisitions which earlier we had never done," he said in an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013.The group purchased British tea firm Tetley in 2000 for $432 million and Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13 billion, at the time the biggest takeover of a foreign firm by an Indian company. Tata Motors then acquired British luxury auto brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co in 2008 for $2.3 billion.His pet projects at Tata Motors included the Indica - the first car model designed and built in India - as well as the Nano, touted as the world's cheapest car. He contributed initial sketches for both models.The Indica was a commercial success. The Nano, however, priced at just 100,000 rupees (about $1,200) and the culmination of Ratan Tata's dream to produce an affordable car for India's masses, was hurt by initial safety issues and bungled marketing. It was discontinued a decade after its launch.A licensed pilot who would occasionally fly the company plane, Ratan Tata never married and was known for his quiet demeanour, relatively modest lifestyle and philanthropic work.About two-thirds of share capital of Tata Sons, the group's holding company, is held by philanthropic trusts.His leadership at Tata was not without controversy - most notably a bitter public feud after the company ousted Cyrus Mistry, a scion of the billionaire Shapoorji Pallonji clan, as chairman of Tata Sons in 2016.The Tata Group said Mistry had failed to turnaround poorly performing businesses while Mistry accused Ratan Tata, who was chairman emeritus of the conglomerate, of interfering and creating an alternate power centre at the group.After he stepped back from the Tata Group, Ratan Tata became known as a prominent investor in Indian startups, backing a plethora of companies including digital payments firm Paytm , Ola Electric, a unit of ride hailing firm Ola, and home and beauty services provider Urban Company.Among his many awards, he received the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honour, in 2008 for exceptional and distinguished service in trade and industry.

HE Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, President of the GCC 161st Ministerial Council Meeting, chaired Monday the joint ministerial meeting for the strategic dialogue between the GCC and the Republic of India, at the GCC General Secretariat in Riyadh.The meeting discussed cooperation relations between the GCC and the Republic of India and ways to boost them, along with several topics of common interest.

At least 19 people were killed and others were injured after heavy rains caused landslides in the hills of India's southern Kerala state, Indian authorities said.The Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) has deployed Fire force and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams to the affected area, Wayanad, where hundreds of people are likely to be trapped, the local media reported.Heavy rains have hampered rescue efforts. Meanwhile, officials believe that many people are likely to have been washed away in the Chaliyar river.The landslides buried several homes, shops, and vehicles under the rubble and washed away a bridge leading to the site, further complicating rescue efforts.The army was roped in to build a temporary bridge that linked the affected area, evacuate people by helicopter, and make necessary arrangements at the disaster site, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said.

At least 116 killed in stampede in north India, authorities sayCrowds were attending a religious event in Hathras, Uttar PradeshOvercrowding as people left may have played a part, official saysPolice launch an investigation into cause of stampedeSay report will be available within 24 hoursAt least 116 people, many of them women and children, were killed in a stampede at a religious gathering in northern India on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the country's worst such tragedies in years.The stampede happened in a village in Hathras district in Utter Pradesh, about 200 km southeast of the national capital New Delhi, where authorities said thousands had gathered in sweltering late afternoon temperatures.The stampede occurred when a crowd of devotees started pushing towards the stage after the event to touch the preacher, who was coming down, said Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.While the cause was not immediately clear, Hathras district administrator Ashish Kumar suggested it may have been "due to overcrowding at the time when people were trying to leave the venue".Another senior state official, Chaitra V., told broadcaster India Today that people may have lost their footing as they sought water in the heat."There was wet mud at one place where people may have slipped. Also because of the heat, people may have made their way to the spot where water was kept and that could have caused the incident as well," she said, adding that 18 were injured and in hospital.Police said they had launched an investigation and promised action against anyone found to be responsible, adding that the gathering may have been larger than had been permitted."Lapses by authorities will also be investigated and action will be taken on the basis of the report which will be available within 24 hours," state police chief Prashant Kumar said.Video clips recorded by news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed bodies piled into the back of trucks and laid out in vehicles.Purses and bags covered in dust, were heaped up at the venue, with people sitting on their haunches sifting through them to identify their belongings.Mobile phones were similarly piled together, waiting to be claimed by their owners.A video on social media showed a large crowd packed into a tented area, standing and listening to devotional tunes as they waved their hands in the direction of the religious leader who sat on a stage.It also showed some women hanging on to the bamboo poles holding up the canopy to get a better view above the heads of the large crowd.Reuters could not immediately verify the social media images."There must have been about 50,000 people...at the gate on the highway, some people were going left and some people were going right, the stampede was caused in that confusion," Suresh Chandra, a witness who was at the gathering, told local media.Seema, a woman who travelled from a town almost 60 km away to attend the event, said she was leaving the venue when the stampede occurred. She was accompanied by three relatives, two of whom were killed.Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the federal government was assisting the state and announced a compensation of 200,000 rupees.

15 dead after freight train rams into passenger trainAccident blamed on freight driver disregarding signalIncident reflects government negligence, opposition leader saysA freight train smashed into the rear of a stationary passenger train in India's West Bengal state on Monday, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens, police said, in an accident that railway authorities blamed on driver error.Media showed images of the pile-up, with containers from the goods train strewn nearby, and one carriage left nearly vertical after the accident, which comes just over a year after a signalling error caused one of India's worst rail crashes.Fifteen bodies were pulled from the mangled carriages, Abhishek Roy, a senior police official in the eastern state's district of Darjeeling, the site of the accident, told Reuters.Fifty-four people were injured and rescue teams from the police and national disaster response force were working to clear debris from the derailed carriages, Roy added.The goods train hit the Kanchanjunga Express travelling to Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, from the northeastern state of Tripura, driving three carriages of the passenger train off the rails.It was not immediately clear how many passengers were on board at the time.Rescuers used iron rods and ropes to work free one carriage of the passenger train that had been swept upwards to lodge on the roof of the freight train by the impact of the collision.The dead included the driver of the freight train and a guard on the passenger train, Jaya Varma Sinha, the head of the railway board that runs the countrywide network, told reporters.The accident happened after the driver of the freight train disregarded a signal, Sinha added.Rescue work has been completed, Sinha said, and authorities are working to restore traffic, with the damage less extensive than initially feared."The guard's compartment in the passenger train was badly damaged," she added. "There were two parcel vans attached ahead of it which reduced the extent of damage to passengers."Nearby residents heard a loud crash and saw the pile-up upon going to investigate, several told the ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake.Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences on the loss of life and said Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was on his way to the site.About 288 people died a year ago in the neighbouring state of Odisha, in India's worst rail crash in more than two decades, caused by a signal failure.Opposition parties criticised Modi's government for its record on rail safety."The increase in railway accidents in the last 10 years is a direct result of the mismanagement and negligence of the Modi government, which results in loss of lives and property of passengers on a daily basis," Modi's main opponent and Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X.

Grieving families kept a solemn vigil in the terminal of an Indian airport Friday as the bodies of dozens of migrant workers killed in a Kuwait building fire returned home.Wednesday's dawn blaze quickly engulfed a housing block home to foreign labourers. Fifty people died in the resulting inferno, 45 of them Indians, with dozens more hospitalised and anguished relatives back home frantically chasing news of whether their loved ones had perished."We held on to hope till the last minute that maybe he got out, maybe he's in the hospital," Anu Aby, the neighbour of 31-year-old victim Cibin Abraham, said.Aby said Abraham had been due to return to his home in Kerala state in August for his child's first birthday.Abraham had been on the phone talking to his wife just an hour before the fire began, he said.Others sat in a waiting area at Kochi airport in India's south, wiping away tears as the Indian Air Force plane carrying the remains of their relatives touched down."It is an unending loss for the families of the deceased," Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters at the airport.The blaze was one of the worst seen in Kuwait. Nearly 200 people were living in the building and many of the dead suffocated and the injured suffered smoke inhalation after being trapped by the flames, according to a fire department source.The bodies of many of the dead were charred beyond recognition and needed to be formally identified through DNA testing before they were repatriated.One Kuwaiti and two foreign residents have been detained on suspicion of manslaughter through negligence of security procedures and fire regulations, authorities in the Gulf state said on Thursday.Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd al-Yousef vowed to address "labour overcrowding and neglect" and threatened to close any buildings that flout safety rules.Three Filipinos were also among the dead, with the country's migrant workers secretary Hans Leo J Cacdac saying authorities were organising their own return efforts."The priority at this stage is the repatriation of human remains," he told a news briefing in Manila Friday.Two more Filipinos were in intensive care after the fire."Let's pray for them," Cacdac said. "They are in critical condition."

Narendra Modi was sworn in as India's prime minister on Sunday for a record-equalling third term, but as a restive coalition's head after a shock poll setback that will test his ability to ensure policy certainty in the world's most populous nation.President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to Modi at a grand ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the president's palace in New Delhi, attended by thousands of dignitaries, including the leaders of seven regional countries, Bollywood stars and industrialists.Modi, who started as a publicist of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is only the second person after independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to serve a third straight term as prime minister.Modi, 73, secured the third term in elections that concluded on June 1 with the support of 14 regional parties in his BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), unlike in the previous two terms when his party won an outright majority.The outcome is seen as a big setback to the popular leader as surveys and exit polls had predicted BJP would secure even more seats than in 2019.Modi delivered world beating growth appeared to have missed a step as a lack of enough jobs, high prices, low incomes and religious faultlines pushed voters to rein him in.When Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, BJP enjoyed strong majorities, allowing him to govern decisively.Modi's new term as prime minister, therefore, is likely to be fraught with challenges on building consensus on contentious political and policy issues in the face of different interests of regional parties and a stronger opposition, analysts say.Some analysts worry that the fiscal balance in the world's fastest growing economy could also come under pressure due to demands for higher development funds for states ruled by the NDA's regional partners and a possible push by BJP to spend more on welfare to woo back voters it lost in this year's election.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his allies were heading for election victory on Tuesday, but the opposition said they had "punished" the ruling party to confound predictions and reduce their parliamentary majority.Commentators and exit polls had projected an overwhelming victory for Modi, but for the first time in a decade Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could fail to secure an overall majority of its own, figures from the election commission projected, meaning it would need to rely on its alliance partners.The main opposition Congress party was set to nearly double its parliamentary seats, in a remarkable turnaround largely driven by deals to field single candidates against the BJP's electoral juggernaut."Voters have punished the BJP," Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters. "I was confident that the people of this country would give the right response."With more than 95 percent of votes counted, the BJP's vote share at 36.9 percent was marginally lower than it was in the last polls in 2019.Modi was re-elected to his constituency representing the Hindu holy city of Varanasi by a margin of 152,000 votes -- compared to nearly half a million votes five years ago.The election commission figures showed the BJP and its allies leading in at least 292 seats out of a total of 543, enough for a parliamentary majority.But the BJP itself had won or was leading in only 240, well down from the 303 it took five years ago, while Congress had won or was ahead in 98, up from 52.- 'Moral defeat' -Celebrations had already begun at the headquarters of Modi's BJP before the full announcement of results.But the mood at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi was also one of jubilation."BJP has failed to win a big majority on its own," Congress lawmaker Rajeev Shukla told reporters. "It's a moral defeat for them."Stocks slumped on speculation the reduced majority would hamper the BJP's ability to push through reforms.Shares in the main listed unit of Adani Enterprises -- owned by key Modi ally Gautam Adani -- dropped 25 percent, before recovering.Modi's opponents have struggled to counter the BJP's well-oiled and well-funded campaign machine, and have been hamstrung by what they say are politically motivated criminal cases aimed at hobbling challengers.US think tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had "increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents".Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of the capital Delhi and a key leader in an alliance formed to compete against Modi, returned to jail on Sunday.Kejriwal, 55, was detained in March over a long-running corruption probe, but was later released and allowed to campaign as long as he returned to custody once voting ended."When power becomes dictatorship, then jail becomes a responsibility," Kejriwal said before surrendering himself, vowing to continue "fighting" from behind bars.The polls were staggering in their size and logistical complexity, with 642 million voters casting their ballots -- ranging from megacities New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as in sparsely populated forest areas and the high-altitude Himalayas."People should know about the strength of Indian democracy," chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said Monday, calling the counting process "robust".Based on the commission's figure of an electorate of 968 million, turnout came to 66.3 percent, down roughly one percentage point from 67.4 percent in the last polls in 2019.Analysts have partly blamed the lower turnout on a searing heatwave across northern India, with temperatures over 45 degrees Celsius.

An "IndiGo" flight received a bomb threat at Delhi Airport on Tuesday morning, prompting authorities to evacuate its passengers and launch a search operation, the Indian authorities announced.Delhi airport authorities indicated that the plane was on a domestic flight from New Delhi to the city of Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh, located in northern India.An airport spokesman confirmed the safety of all passengers, and that they were evacuated from the emergency exits without any injuries.All necessary protocols were followed and the aircraft was taken to a remote bay as per guidelines by airport security agencies. The flight is currently undergoing inspection.

At least 24 people were killed, most of them children, when a fire broke out at a packed amusement park arcade in Rajkot, in India's Gujarat on Saturday, officials said.Footage posted on social media, which AFP was not able to immediately verify, showed a ferocious blaze engulfing a structure, with black smoke pouring into the sky.Prabhav Joshi, the district collector of Rajkot, told AFP that 24 people had died in the inferno, "mostly children", and another half-dozen were hospitalised."The police have detained four persons associated with the game zone for questioning," he said. "We are trying to get more details about the owners of the facility."More than 300 people were in the two-storey structure at the TRP amusement and theme park when the blaze broke out as it was a summer holiday weekend, Rajkot fire officer Ilesh Kher told reporters."People got trapped as a temporary structure at the facility collapsed near the entrance, making it difficult for the people to come out," he said.The flames spread rapidly because of its flammable material, he added.Pictures from the scene showed a corrugated metal structure largely in ruins.Gujarat is the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who posted on X: "Extremely distressed by the fire mishap in Rajkot. My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. Prayers for the injured."- Fires common in India -It took nearly an hour to douse the fire, with about a dozen ambulances carrying the injured to hospital.Fire department officials said a short-circuit was suspected as the cause and police at the site said the bodies of the dead were heavily burned, making identification difficult.Pictures from an Instagram account that appears to belong to the facility show a lively gaming and recreational centre, with teenagers enjoying activities such as bowling, go-karting and trampolining.

India and France have agreed to collaborate in the joint production of defense equipment, particularly helicopters and submarines for the Indian Armed Forces, as well as for production for other countries.In a press release, the Indian government stated that this agreement was reached during a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of Macron's visit to New Delhi.Both sides agreed to expand bilateral relations in the areas of defense production, nuclear energy, space research, and the use of artificial intelligence in public services such as climate change, health, and agriculture.France ranks second after Russia as the largest supplier of weapons to India, which has relied on French fighter aircraft for four decades.The bilateral summit between Modi and Macron took place during the French President's visit, marking their fifth meeting since last May. (QNA)

A blast occurred near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday evening and all staff were unharmed following the explosion, authorities said."We can confirm that around 5:20 pm there was a blast at close proximity to the embassy," Israeli Embassy spokesperson Guy Nir told Reuters, adding that local police and security teams were investigating the incident.Israel's foreign ministry said all staff were unharmed following the blast and Israeli authorities were cooperating with their Indian counterparts to look into the cause of the explosion.The city's fire service had not found anything so far in their search operation, senior fire department official Atul Garg told Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake.In January 2021, a small bomb went off near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, without harming anyone. An Israeli official said at the time that Israel was treating the blast as a terrorist incident.

An Israel-affiliated merchant vessel was struck by an uncrewed aerial vehicle off India's west coast, British maritime security firm Ambrey said on Saturday, in the first such known attack so far away from the Red Sea since the Gaza war.A fire on the Liberian-flagged tanker was extinguished without crew casualties in the incident 200km southwest of the Indian city of Veraval, it said, adding some "structural damage was also reported and some water was taken onboard"."Merchant vessels are advised these types of attacks are typically targeted at Israel-affiliated shipping, but have in the past mistakenly hit previously Israel-affiliated vessels," Ambrey said. "This event fell within Ambrey's Iranian UAV heightened threat area."An Indian Navy official told Reuters that it responded to a request for assistance on Saturday morning."The safety of crew and ship has been ascertained. The Navy has also dispatched a warship to arrive in the area and provide assistance as required," the official said, declining to be named as he was not authorised to discuss the incident.Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, identified the tanker as MV Chem Pluto carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia. Citing Indian defence sources, ANI said the tanker had around 20 Indians on board.A Reuters tracker showed the ship was headed towards the Port of Mangalore in India's south.The hit on the vessel follows drone and missile attacks in the Red Sea by Houthis, who say they are supporting Palestinians under siege by Israel in the Gaza Strip, on commercial shipping, forcing shippers to change course and take longer routes around the southern tip of Africa.

Indian rescuers on Tuesday pulled out all 41 construction workers trapped for 17 days inside a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas, hours after drilling through the debris of rock, concrete and earth to reach them.The evacuation of the men - low-wage workers from some of India's poorest states - began more than six hours after rescuers broke through the debris in the tunnel in Uttarakhand state, which caved in on Nov. 12.They were pulled out on wheeled stretchers through a 90 cm wide steel pipe, with the entire process being completed in about an hour."Their condition is first-class and absolutely fine ... just like yours or mine. There is no tension about their health," said Wakil Hassan, a rescue team leader.The first to be evacuated, a short man wearing a dark grey winter jacket and a yellow hard-hat, was garlanded with marigold flowers and welcomed in traditional Indian style inside the tunnel by state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and federal deputy highways minister V.K. Singh.Some walked out smiling and were hugged by Dhami, while others made gestures of thanks with clasped hands or sought blessings by touching his feet. All were garlanded and also presented with a white fabric stole by Dhami and Singh."I want to say to the friends who were trapped in the tunnel that your courage and patience is inspiring everyone," Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on social media platform X."It is a matter of great satisfaction that after a long wait these friends of ours will now meet their loved ones. The patience and courage that all these families have shown in this challenging time cannot be appreciated enough."Federal road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari thanked rescue workers and said in a post on X that a "safety audit of the tunnel will also be done now".Ambulances that had lined up with lights flashing at the mouth of the tunnel transported the workers to a hospital about 30 km away.Local residents gathered outside the tunnel set off firecrackers, distributed sweets and shouted slogans hailing Mother India.The 41 men have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe, but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of snags.Government agencies managing the unprecedented crisis had on Monday turned to "rat miners" to drill through the rocks and gravel by hand from inside the evacuation pipe pushed through the debris after machinery failed.The miners are experts at a primitive, hazardous and controversial method used mostly to get at coal deposits through narrow passages, and get their name because they resemble burrowing rats.The miners, brought from central India, worked through Monday night and finally broke through the estimated 60-metres of rocks, earth and metal on Tuesday afternoon.The tunnel is part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890- km network of roads.Authorities have not said what caused the cave-in but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.

At least four people were killed and dozens injured Saturday evening in a stampede at a university in southern India, local officials and media reported. The stampede occurred at an outdoor auditorium in the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in southwest Kerala state, where a concert had been planned. In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, Kerala state governor Arif Mohammed Khan said he was "deeply shocked and grieved to know about the sad demise of four students" at CUSAT. "Heartfelt condolences to their families. Prayers for speedy recovery of injured," he added. State Health Minister Veena George said in a statement that four people had been brought dead to the Kalamassery Medical College Hospital while four more were in critical condition, the PTI news agency reported, adding that over 60 people had been injured. A local police official said that a crowd outside the auditorium had rushed to seek cover from a sudden downpour when a number of people slipped on some stairs and were subsequently trampled, according to PTI. One of the deadliest stampedes in recent history occurred a decade ago in India, when at least 115 people were killed on the sidelines of a religious festival in central Madhya Pradesh state.

India's Sun-monitoring spacecraft has crossed a landmark point on its journey to escape "the sphere of Earth's influence", its space agency said, days after the disappointment of its Moon rover failing to awaken.The Aditya-L1 mission, which started its four-month journey towards the centre of the solar system on September 2, carries instruments to observe the Sun's outermost layers."The spacecraft has escaped the sphere of Earth's influence," the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement late Saturday.Aditya, named after the Hindu Sun deity, has travelled 920,000 kilometres, just over half the journey's total distance.At that point, the gravitational forces of both astronomical bodies cancel out, allowing the mission to remain in a stable halo orbit around our nearest star."This is the second time in succession that ISRO could send a spacecraft outside the sphere of influence of the Earth, the first time being the Mars Orbiter Mission", the agency added.In August, India became the first country to land a craft near the largely unexplored lunar south pole, and just the fourth nation to land on the Moon.Rover Pragyan surveyed the vicinity of its landing site but was powered down before the start of lunar night, which lasts roughly two weeks on Earth.India had hoped to prolong the mission by reactivating the solar-powered vehicle once daylight returned to the lunar surface, but so far has been greeted by radio silence."It is OK if it does not wake up because the rover has done what it was expected to do," ISRO chief S. Somanath said Wednesday.In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars, and it is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth orbit by next year.The United States and the European Space Agency have sent numerous probes to the centre of the solar system, beginning with NASA's Pioneer programme in the 1960s.Japan and China have both launched their own solar observatory missions into Earth orbit.But if successful, ISRO's latest mission will be the first by any Asian nation to be placed in orbit around the Sun.

Indian authorities vowed Saturday to take action after a primary school teacher ordered her pupils to take turns slapping a Muslim classmate, with footage of the incident stoking outrage online.Rights groups say hate crimes and violence against India's large Muslim minority have been on the rise since Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.Footage of Thursday's incident shows the teacher of a private school in Uttar Pradesh state instructing students to hit the seven-year-old, ostensibly because he got his multiplication tables wrong."Why are you hitting him so lightly? Hit him hard," she is heard telling the children, as the boy stands crying."Start hitting him on the waist... His face is turning red, hit him on the waist instead," she added.Police superintendent Satyanarayan Prajapat said the footage had been verified."Departmental action will be taken against the teacher," he said in a video posted on social media.The victim's father filed a case with police in Muzaffarnagar district, where the incident took place, the magistrate said in a separate video statement.The graphic footage provoked widespread dismay online, with opposition leader Rahul Gandhi blaming the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for stoking religious intolerance in the Hindu-majority country."Sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning a holy place like school into a marketplace of hatred," he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter."There's nothing worse a teacher can do for the country," he added. "This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP that has set every corner of India on fire."Uttar Pradesh has been governed by the BJP since 2017 when it appointed Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed Hindu monk seen as a potential successor to Modi.During his tenure, Hindu mobs have launched a spate of attacks over so-called cow protection -- a sacred animal for many Hindus -- and committed other hate crimes that have sown fear among the state's Muslim population.

Nine people were killed on Saturday after a train coach in southern India caught fire when a passenger tried to make tea, officials said.The coach, which had been detached from a train, was at the Madurai railway yard in the southern state of Tamil Nadu when the fire broke out."It was a single, stationary coach booked by a private tourist operator. Somebody tried to make tea and it caused the fire," Madurai district spokesman Sali Thalapathi told reporters."Nine people have died, three of them are women. Nine others are injured, but their injuries are not life-threatening."None of the dead had been identified so far, he added.Video footage showed huge flames leaping out of the windows of the carriage. Local media reports said passengers had smuggled a gas cylinder aboard which exploded when they tried to use it. (QNA)

India began exploring the Moon's surface with a rover on Thursday, a day after it became the first nation to land a craft near the largely unexplored lunar south pole.Pragyan -- "Wisdom" in Sanskrit -- rolled out of the lander hours after the latest milestone in India's ambitious but cut-price space programme sparked huge celebrations across the country."Rover ramped down the lander and India took a walk on the moon!" the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday.The six-wheeled, solar-powered rover will amble around the relatively unmapped region and transmit images and scientific data over its two-week lifespan.The successful touchdown of the Chandrayaan-3 ("Mooncraft-3") mission came just days after a Russian lander crashed in the same region.It also comes four years after the previous Indian lunar mission failed during its final descent, in what was seen at the time as a huge setback for its space programme.However, India is steadily matching the achievements of established spacefaring nations.Chandrayaan-3 has captivated public attention since launching nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of cheering spectators.Politicians staged Hindu prayer rituals to wish for the mission's success and schoolchildren followed the final moments of its descent from live broadcasts in classrooms."I am feeling very proud. India has made its name shine," Bhagwan Singh, a shopkeeper in the capital New Delhi, told AFP."It's a very happy moment for us."Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday the successful lunar landing -- previously achieved only by the United States, Russia and China -- was a triumph for "all of humanity".Elon Musk, whose firm SpaceX is a leader in commercial space launches, hailed the landing as "super cool".The Indian mission took much longer to reach the Moon than the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.Chandrayaan-3 was launched on a less-powerful rocket and had to orbit the Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long journey.- Future goals - India has a comparatively low-budget space programme, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.Chandrayaan-3 has a cost of $74.6 million -- far lower than many missions from other countries and a testament to India's frugal space engineering.Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts' wages.In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars and plans to send a probe towards the sun in September.ISRO is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth's orbit by next year.It also plans a joint mission with Japan to send another probe to the Moon by 2025 and an orbital mission to Venus within the next two years.