As baby Lili celebrates her first birthday in Australia, far away in India her surrogate mother recalls the day the child was born -- and on whom she never laid eyes.

"I averted my gaze," says Seita Thapa, recounting her experience of giving birth at the Surrogacy Center India clinic in New Delhi last February on behalf of a gay male couple who used an egg donated from another woman.

Scientists said Sunday they had found traces of a micro-continent hidden underneath the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

The slab, dubbed Mauritia, was probably formed around 61-83 million years ago after Madagascar split from India, but eventually broke up and became smothered by thick lava deposits, they said.

Adolf Hitler is running for election in India. So is Frankenstein.

The tiny northeast Indian state of Meghalaya has a special fascination for interesting and sometimes controversial names, and the ballot for state elections Saturday is proof.

Militant Islamists told Indian police interrogators last year of plans for a possible attack in the area of Hyderabad where twin blasts killed 14 people, a senior police official said Friday.

"We interrogated two militants (from the Indian Mujahideen group), who said they had monitored various spots in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune for a possible attack. One of the places they mentioned was Dilsukh Nagar, which was hit last night," S.N. Shrivastava, a Delhi police commissioner, told Agence France Presse.

Twin bombings killed at least 20 people on Thursday outside a popular cinema and bus stand in the Indian city of Hyderabad, provoking safety fears among Australia's touring cricket team.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the perpetrators of the "dastardly act" would be punished. It came with the nation on alert after the recent hanging of a separatist unleashed protests in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.

India said on Thursday it will send a $70 million space mission to Mars this year to study the red planet's atmosphere.

The unmanned Mars orbiter mission, to be launched in October by the Indian Space Research Organisation, will undertake a 300-day journey to the planet to collect data about its climate and geology.

Three sisters aged between six and 11 were raped and murdered before their bodies were dumped down a village well in rural western India, police said on Wednesday.

The bodies of the three schoolgirls were found last week, two days after they went missing on February 14 from their home in the Bhandara district of Maharashtra state, police superintendent Aarti Singh told Agence France Presse.

British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the site of a colonial-era massacre in India on Wednesday, describing the episode as "deeply shameful" while stopping short of a public apology.

On the last leg of a three-day trip aimed at forging deeper economic ties, Cameron took the bold decision to visit the city of Amritsar and tackle an enduring scar of British rule on the subcontinent, which ended in 1947.

British Prime Minister David Cameron promised full cooperation on Tuesday with an Indian investigation into alleged corruption in a helicopter deal, an issue which has clouded his trip to New Delhi.

Cameron arrived in India on Monday with what he called the biggest-ever British overseas business delegation, pushing for better access to the booming market of 1.2 billion people and greater trade.

British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in India's financial hub Mumbai on Monday on a three-day trade-focused visit clouded by a corruption scandal over British-made helicopters sold to New Delhi.

Cameron's trip comes amid a raging scandal over the procurement of 12 helicopters for use by VIPs in 2010, which were bought for $748 million (560 million euros) from Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland.