Indian police said Tuesday they had arrested a minister in the Delhi state government on suspicion of faking his law degree, sparking accusations of political interference by the country's ruling party.

Jitendra Singh Tomar, who holds a number of portfolios in the Delhi government including justice, appeared in court on Tuesday to be formally charged with criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery.

Twelve Maoist rebels have been killed in a gunbattle with police in a forest in an eastern Indian state known as a rebel stronghold, officers said Tuesday.

They said firing erupted when police tried to intercept a group of suspected guerrillas whom they thought were heading to a village to extort money in Jharkhand state late Monday.

A fire in a high-rise apartment block in Mumbai has killed seven people after they became trapped on the upper floors, officials said Sunday.

Fire officials are probing the cause of the blaze in the Indian financial capital which erupted on Saturday night on the 14th floor of the 21-storey tower block, officials said.

Thousands living near the Bangladesh-India border celebrated Sunday an historic agreement that will allow them to choose their nationality after decades of stateless limbo.

Poor villagers living in border enclaves waved Bangladeshi flags, held street parades and broke down in tears after Saturday's ratification of the deal covering parts of the border along India's eastern flank.

Bangladesh and India on Saturday sealed a historic land pact to swap territories, which will finally allow tens of thousands of people living in border enclaves to choose their nationality after decades of stateless limbo.

Foreign secretaries of the two nations signed a protocol and exchanged instruments of ratification to make operational the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) in the presence of visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladeshi premier Sheikh Hasina.  

Heavily armed rebels in India's restive northeast killed at least 20 troops on Thursday, police said, in one of the area's worst such attacks in years.

Another 12 soldiers were seriously wounded in the ambush on a military convoy in Manipur state, which has been plagued by insurgent violence for decades.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter Wednesday finalized agreements with India to jointly develop next-generation chemical and biological protection for troops and military mobile hybrid power sources.

Carter met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and signed a 10-year strategic defense framework pact, which was agreed to during President Obama's visit to New Delhi in January.

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen said Wednesday she had left her home in India for the United States after receiving death threats from Islamists behind the recent murders of atheist bloggers in her home country.

Nasreen, who fled to Europe in 1994 after protests against her work by Muslim extremists and who now lives in New Delhi, tweeted that she did not feel safe in the Indian capital.

Indian soldiers have killed three armed militants in Kashmir in an ongoing gun battle, foiling an attack on a military base near the de facto border with Pakistan, officials said Monday.

The fighting erupted early Sunday morning after militants crossed the heavily militarized border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, 140 kilometers (86 miles) northwest of the main city of Srinagar, an army spokesman said.

India will only buy 36 Rafale fighter jets as they are "way too expensive," the defense minister said Sunday, dashing lingering French hopes of a larger deal that has been years in the making.

Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said the previous government's plans to buy 126 of the fighter jets from French firm Dassault were "economically unviable and not required."