Toby Stephens, who played the villain in the most recent James Bond film Die Another Day, will step back in time to portray an autocratic 19th Century British officer based in India in a Bollywood epic planned for later this year.

Thousands of Indian army soldiers tried to control Hindu mobs in the western city of Ahamadabad today as the death toll in the country’s worst religious violence in a decade approached 300.

A Pakistani man today confessed to attacking the US cultural centre in Calcutta, as he was dying after a shoot-out with Indian police, the Indian government said.