Police in eastern India have arrested one person and are searching for 14 others after a couple who had eloped together were beaten to death and cremated by relatives as a crowd looked on, police said.

The head of an Indian primary school where 23 children died after a meal made with contaminated oil has been arrested, nine days after she went into hiding.

NEPAL plans to investigate whether a centuries-old tradition of worshipping a virgin girl as a “living goddess” or Kumari has violated the child’s human rights, a senior official said yesterday.

An Indian court has sentenced a doctor to two years in prison for using ultrasound tests to determine the sex of foetuses – information the mothers could use to abort baby girls, an official said today.

Nepal, the world’s only Hindu kingdom, has a new living goddess.