Separatist militants opened fire with automatic weapons on Muslim villagers in remote northeastern India, killing at least 10 people in two attacks, police said Friday. Four people were wounded.

Rebels from one faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland were behind the attacks late Thursday, said L.R. Bishnoi, the inspector general of police in the Kokrajhar district of Assam state.

Indian Kashmir largely shut down on Thursday over the shooting death of a man during protests one day earlier against the country's ongoing mammoth election, residents and police said.

Schools, shops and other businesses were mostly closed in the Kashmir Valley after separatist leaders opposed to Indian rule of the region called for a general strike over the shooting by security forces.

Twin bombs planted on a train killed at least one person and wounded nine others on Thursday in the main southern Indian city of Chennai, police and government officials said.

The explosion, which comes as India holds a mammoth general election, occurred in a carriage of an overnight train from Bangalore as it pulled into Chennai central station, a railway official said.

Cricket-mad teenager Dhaval Lodaya was on his way to a temple when his Mumbai train derailed and he bled to death -- becoming one of the 10 people who die every day on the city's rail network.

Known as the lifeline of India's congested financial capital, the low-fare trains have become a dangerous gamble for the millions of commuters who use them daily, with 3,506 deaths recorded last year alone.

One protester was killed and two others critically wounded in Indian Kashmir on Wednesday when police fired on protesters during clashes with government forces at the end of polling, police said.

The clashes broke out in old town Srinagar, the region's main city, soon after polling ended and as government forces were withdrawing from the area.

Frontrunner for prime minister Narendra Modi declared an end to India's "mother-son government" as he voted Wednesday in his party's heartland in the latest stage of the country's mammoth elections.

Voters queued early in 89 constituencies across nine states and territories in the latest leg of staggered voting in the world's biggest election which ends with results announced on May 16.

A television debate show in northern India ended in horror after a spectator set himself ablaze and embraced a local politician, leaving both men fighting for their lives, police said Tuesday.

The election show on India's state-owned national TV channel Doordarshan was being pre-recorded in a park on Monday in Sultanpur, a town about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the city of Lucknow.

A Muslim woman in eastern India has alleged she was gang-raped by more than a dozen men because of her work helping the Hindu nationalist opposition in ongoing elections, police said Tuesday.

The woman from Jharkhand state has filed a complaint with police that a mob attacked her in her home on Monday and also assaulted her 13-year-old daughter. Her husband was allegedly handcuffed during the attack. 

India successfully test-fired a new anti-ballistic missile on Sunday in a step towards developing a missile defense system which only an elite club of countries has built.

India, which shares borders with arch-rival Pakistan and giant China, both of whom are nuclear-armed, is developing the system that aims to shield it against a ballistic missile attack.

Women's issues may be high on the agenda for political parties vying for votes in India's mammoth general election, but few female lawmakers will get an opportunity to implement the policies being proposed.

Less than a fifth of the candidates standing for the front-running main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or the ruling Congress, are women, according to an analysis by AFP.