Hindu legislator, seven others shot dead in UP

LUCKNOW, India, Wednesday (AFP) Gunmen shot dead an opposition Hindu nationalist legislator and seven others in northern India, a senior state official said.

Krishnanand Rai was on his way to a wedding when attackers ambushed his jeep and sprayed it with bullets, Alok Sinha, principal home secretary of Uttar Pradesh state, said.

Rai and seven others - including supporters and security guards - were killed near Ballia town, 350 kilometres (220 miles) southeast of the state capital Lucknow, Sinha said.

The slain legislator, a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was facing some 40 criminal charges including kidnapping and murder, Sinha said.

Meanwhile the death toll from last month's bomb blasts in the Indian capital New Delhi has risen to 66, with over 220 injured in the explosions, India's home minister Shivraj Patil told parliament Tuesday. Three people - Tariq Ahmed Dar, Mohammed Hussain Fazli and Mohammed Rafique Shah - have been arrested in connection with the October 29 explosions, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Patil as saying.

The blasts took place in two crowded markets and near a passenger bus just before the popular Hindu festival of Diwali. "The interrogation of Dar has revealed that he was the main coordinator and facilitator of these blasts," Patil told MPs.

"During investigation of the case, it was revealed that the conspiracy was hatched by a foreign-based terrorist organisation. Further investigation is in progress," the minister said.