Parliamentary elections in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, entered their final stage yesterday, with early polling showing an apparent victory for the Samajwadi (Socialist) party.

'I'll always come back to India. It is bewitching'

India shows how to put on a real celebration

UN marks landmark day by designating several newborns across the globe with symbolic status

Two hardy sub-genres of cricket literature are the adventures (usually disastrous) of a bunch of mixed-ability misfits who form a team to play friendly – and not so friendly – matches, and one-man odysseys around the country to take the temperature of the game in its myriad forms and locations.

three elephants were electrocuted in a wildlife sanctuary in northern India after they uprooted a utility pole and became caught in its 10,000-volt wires.

Two Muslim mothers in a northern Indian town have been arrested for killing their daughters after they eloped with Hindu men.

Rahul Gandhi, who is seen as India's prime minister-in-waiting, was briefly arrested after he joined farmers protesting against land being taken over for a $2bn highway, underscoring how land disputes are emerging as a political issue.

An army of termites munched through 10 million rupees (£137,000) in currency notes stored in a steel chest at a bank, police in northern India said yesterday.

BBC Hindi, the shortwave radio service that since 1940 has brought global news and current affairs to some of India's poorest and most remote regions, scaled back its transmission yesterday in a move that the author Vikram Seth said was contributing to "a great loss of goodwill and increase of mistrust in India".