A speeding express train rammed into a group of people in southern India Saturday, killing at least eight after they leaped from another train following fears of a blaze, reports said.

Scores of people were also reportedly injured in the accident at Gotlam station in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Thousands of Sikhs from across the globe rallied Friday at the U.N.'s Geneva base, demanding an international investigation of a deadly wave of violence against their community in India in 1984.

Sikh activists say the killings 29 years ago were state-sponsored genocide, while India blames them on communal rioting.

India stepped up security Thursday after a fresh outbreak of violence killed four people in the same region hit by deadly communal clashes last month, a police officer said.

The villagers were killed overnight close to Muzaffarnagar, 105 kilometers (65 miles) northeast of capital New Delhi, where mobs last month burnt houses during Muslim-Hindu riots that left 50 people dead and forced hundreds to flee.

A speeding bus exploded in a ball of flames after crashing into the central reservation of a southern Indian highway early Wednesday, killing 45 passengers as they slept.

Only five people on the vehicle escaped the inferno, including the driver and the cleaner who broke windows and fled before the fuel tank exploded, police said.

India said one of its soldiers was killed when Pakistan troops fired early Monday across the border in Kashmir, the latest in a series of deadly flareups in the disputed Himalayan region.

The soldier was killed just after midnight at an army post along the northern part of the heavily militarized border that divides the two countries in Kashmir, an Indian army spokesman said.

Thousands of Kashmiri people observed a "black day" in Pakistani Kashmir on Sunday, rallying at an event organized by Islamists against Indian "brutalities" and occupation of the Himalayan region.

The rally was set up by the United Jihad Council (UJC), which consists of 16 Islamist groups, militant outfits and political parties, and was attended by jihadi groups including Hizb-ul-Mujahidin and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

A series of crude bombs killed five people in an eastern Indian city on Sunday, shortly before opposition party leader Narendra Modi was due to hold a campaign rally, police said.

Seven small bombs exploded near the venue in Patna where tens of thousands were gathering to hear Hindu hardliner Modi, a popular but divisive leader, launch the opposition's campaign for elections in Bihar state.

Looking to find a husband, make friends, and get ahead at work? Then you need to have lighter skin. That's the all-pervasive message in India, and it's something that one actress is fighting to overturn.

The new poster girl of the "Dark is Beautiful" campaign, Nandita Das, has called out India's obsession with fair skin -- a prejudice she says has driven some young women to the brink of suicide.

Torrential rains have claimed as many as 48 lives in eastern India, which this month saw the worst cyclone to hit the country in over a decade, the Press Trust of India reported Saturday.

The downpour has seen rivers spill their banks in India's eastern coastal states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, forcing thousands to flee their homes and seek refuge in shelters, two weeks after India's most severe cyclone in 14 years lashed the coastline.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said he is happy to be questioned by police over an alleged coal scam amid growing speculation he will be called to give evidence.

Last week, police named leading industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and former coal secretary P.C. Parakh as suspects in their probe into the allocation of coal mining rights.