Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh vowed Monday severely to punish those to blame for recent Hindu-Muslim clashes that left 49 people dead, as he met people displaced by the violence.

Singh said his government would work with local authorities to help victims of the unrest, which erupted earlier this month in the village of Muzaffarnagar in India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh.

Almost 60 children were taken to hospital in eastern India after they were mistakenly instructed to swallow a hepatitis B vaccine instead of polio drops, officials said Monday.

The children started vomiting and sweating after they were orally given hepatitis B vaccine, which is normally injected, at clinics in a village in West Bengal state on Sunday, the health officials said.

Workers clearing rubble in a flood-devastated town in the Indian Himalayas have discovered 19 million rupees ($303,000) in a safe which had been swept away by floodwaters, police said Monday.

The safe was found on Saturday near the ruins of a bank in the town of Kedarnath that was flattened by flash floods in June, a police officer said.

India on Sunday successfully test-fired for a second time a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, marking another advance in its military capabilities.

The Agni V blasted off at 8:50 am (0320 GMT) from a concrete launchpad on an island off the eastern state of Orissa.

Indian rights groups voiced dismay Saturday over death sentences handed to four men for a fatal gang rape, saying it was unlikely to reverse the country's "rape crisis" despite a public clamor for their execution.

After a seven-month fast-track trial, Judge Yogesh Khanna said Friday the four men should be "hanged by the neck til they are dead" for the brutal rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus last December.

Security forces killed 14 Maoists in a firefight in eastern India on Saturday, police said, marking the latest bloodshed in a long conflict in which the rebels have been battling to overthrow the government.

It was the single biggest rebel death toll in Orissa state from one incident and came amid an intense anti-Maoist campaign in the area conducted over the past month, police said.

A powerful bomb blast in India's restive northeast -- plagued for decades by separatist violence -- has killed nine laborers and injured about 21 other people, police said Saturday.

The explosion took place late Friday in a busy area on the outskirts of Imphal, capital of the state of Manipur, which borders Myanmar.

India's main opposition named hardline Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi on Friday as its prime ministerial candidate for elections due next year, overriding doubts in the party about his polarizing character.

The decision caps the ascent of 62-year-old Modi in the party, which has spent nearly a decade in the political wilderness.

An Indian judge on Friday sentenced to death four men convicted of the fatal gang rape of a student on a New Delhi bus, fulfilling the dying wish of the 23-year-old victim.

The packed courtroom burst into applause as Judge Yogesh Khanna announced his sentence. The defendants -- lowly paid migrants to New Delhi mostly in their 20s -- broke down in tears and one of them, gym assistant Vinay Sharma, howled loudly before he was led away by police.

Prosecutors sought the death sentence Wednesday for four men convicted over the "diabolical" gang rape and murder of a student on a New Delhi bus as the judge set sentencing for later this week.

Judge Yogesh Khanna heard three hours of arguments from prosecution and defence lawyers in his court in the south of India's capital before announcing he would reserve his judgment until Friday afternoon.