Maoist insurgents ambushed a security patrol and killed four troopers in central India on Wednesday, police said, the latest bloodshed in a lengthy conflict over land, jobs and power.

The rebels triggered a small bomb and then opened fire on a patrol in a district of Chhattisgarh state long considered a Maoist stronghold, a senior district police officer said.

A crude bomb exploded near a nuclear plant in southern India, demolishing two houses and killing six people, police said Wednesday. One of three people seriously injured was identified by police as an anti-nuclear activist and a suspect in the case.

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, which has inspired years of protests by local residents in Tamil Nadu state, was unaffected by the blast and operating normally, police said.

A couple who allegedly held three women as "slaves" in a London house for 30 years were prominent Maoist activists in the 1970s, according to media reports on Monday.

The couple, named by British newspapers as Indian-born Aravindan Balakrishnan and his Tanzanian wife Chanda, were arrested Thursday after their three alleged captives were freed in a police operation.

Hundreds of thousands were evacuated as a severe cyclone slammed into southeastern India Friday, packing strong winds and torrential rains and killing at least two people, according to officials.

"Cyclone Helen has made landfall," an official with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) told Agence France Presse, as rains lashed Andhra Pradesh, disrupting life and snapping communication lines.

A major fire ripped through a tightly-packed slum in the Indian city of Mumbai on Thursday, destroying dozens of shanties as residents desperately tried to douse the flames.

Sixteen fire engines, eight water tankers and three ambulances rushed to the scene in the city's southern tip after the blaze broke out late morning, the fire brigade said.

A powerful cyclone was hurtling Wednesday towards India's southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, a month after a killer storm forced one million people to flee their homes, officials said.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) advised the state administration to evacuate thousands from the path of Cyclone Helen and forecast it would batter several districts of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday.

Russia on Saturday finally handed over a refurbished ex-Soviet aircraft carrier to India after a refit that overran by five years and went vastly over budget, damaging ties between the countries.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony took part in a ceremony at the Arctic port of Severodvinsk on Saturday morning, Russian news agencies reported.

Indian Kashmir's most senior separatist leader, Syed Ali Geelani, was put under house arrest again on Saturday -- just two weeks after the end of a previous eight-month detention.

A police truck and a contingent of policemen was placed outside the 83-year-old leader's home and he was told to remain inside.

A truck packed with laborers flipped over on a southern Indian highway on Saturday, leaving at least 22 people dead, including women and children, police said.

The small truck carrying some 35 laborers, overturned early in the morning near Belgaum, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the Karnataka state capital of Bangalore.

Sri Lanka's president urged his peers Friday not to pass judgment over his country's past as he hosted a Commonwealth summit that threatens to be upstaged by a visit to the war-torn north by Britain's David Cameron.

The summit was meant to be a chance for President Mahinda Rajapakse, a Sinhalese nationalist leader who oversaw the crushing of Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009, to showcase the development of his country.