A defendant on trial over a fatal gang-rape in New Delhi last December is critically ill after being attacked in prison, his lawyer said Wednesday, weeks after the main accused died in the same jail.

Vinay Sharma was rushed to the state-run Lok Nayak Hospital in New Delhi on Tuesday with chest injuries after he was assaulted in Tihar Jail, lawyer A. P. Singh told Agence France Presse, also alleging that his client's food had been poisoned.

India's opposition demanded Saturday the resignation of Congress Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, raising the stakes after forcing the exit of two cabinet ministers over corruption scandals.

Pressure has been building for months on the premier, who is widely accused of ineffectiveness while overseeing a sharp economic slowdown and turning a blind eye to a slew of graft controversies that have alarmed foreign investors.

A Pakistani prisoner who was attacked in an Indian jail died on Thursday, hospital officials said, after suffering injuries in an apparent tit-for-tat assault last week.

"His condition was extremely critical. He died early morning," a senior doctor at a government hospital in Chandigarh told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid began a two-day trip to China Thursday, as the Asian giants seek to repair the damage from a border flare-up that highlighted long-rumbling tensions.

The world's two most populous countries have in recent years seen relations improve and trade boom, and both sides had sought to stay low-key over the latest row, which lasted several weeks.

At least 33 people died Wednesday when an overcrowded bus skidded off the road into a fast-flowing river in northern India, police said.

"So far, 33 bodies have been retrieved from the river and 14 other people are injured and have been rushed to hospital," local police chief R.S. Negi told Agence France Presse from the crash site in Hamachal Pradesh state.

More than 300,000 babies die within 24 hours of being born in India each year from infections and other preventable causes, a report said Tuesday, blaming a lack of political will and funding for the crisis.

India accounts for 29 percent of all newborn deaths worldwide, according to the charity Save the Children which published the findings at the launch of its annual State of the World's Mothers report.

India and China have starting withdrawing troops from a disputed area in the Himalayas to resolve a row that has strained ties between the nuclear-armed neighbors, Indian officials said Monday.

"Both sides reached an agreement on Sunday night after a meeting was held between border commanders. We will withdraw our troops and China will do the same," a senior Indian army official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanded "justice" from Pakistan on Thursday following the overnight death of a jailed Indian spy who was attacked by inmates at a prison in Lahore last week.

"The criminals responsible for the barbaric and murderous attack on Sarabjit Singh must be brought to justice," he said on his official Twitter page.

A lonely male tiger that left the jungle and entered a zoo in eastern India in quest of a mate has been trapped, an official of the state-run park said on Wednesday.

"It seems to have strayed into the zoo attracted by a tigress," Sudarshan Panda, director of the Nandankanan Zoological Park near Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern state of Orissa.

An earthquake that shook parts of north India on Wednesday left at least two people dead and injured nearly 70 others, including more than 30 students, a report said.

The moderate-intensity quake measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and struck along the border of the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, an Indian government official who declined to be named, told Agence France Presse.