Bomb on Indian train kills three and wounds 25

A bomb exploded on a passenger train in Punjab state in India yesterday killing three people and injuring 25.

A bomb exploded on a passenger train in Punjab state in India yesterday killing three people and injuring 25.

Punjab chief minister Mr Amarinder Singh said it was not known who planted the bomb but it did not appear linked to religious violence in the western state of Gujarat in which over 700 people have died.

"It should also not be taken as revival of militancy in the state," Mr Singh said. Punjab saw a Sikh separatist rebellion in the 1980s.

The explosion in a carriage of the Dhanbad Express occurred in Doraha, on the outskirts of the industrial town of Ludhiana, a police official said.

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Most of the injured were labourers from the eastern state of Bihar who had come to Punjab to work on farms.

India has been on alert for fresh violence after the worst Hindu-Muslim unrest in a decade erupted in Gujarat, triggered by the deaths of 58 Hindus travelling from the holy city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh on a train that was torched by a Muslim mob.

India's Supreme Court has forbidden Hindu volunteers from carrying out prayer ceremonies in Ayodhya at a site where both religions want to build a place of worship.