In a scathing attack on the Adityanath dispensation in Uttar Pradesh over the Hathras gangrape incident, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said the victim was "killed by a ruthless government", its administration and its ignorance.

The Supreme Court Thursday rejected a PIL filed by retired bureaucrats alleging gross mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic by the central government as the number of those infected by the virus has crossed 63 lakh in the country.

Activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan moved the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking review of the August 31 sentencing order to either pay nominal fine of Re 1 or face a three-month jail term and debarment from law practice for three years in the contempt case for his two tweets against the judiciary.

The transmission of COVID-19 in India has been driven mainly by superspreaders or a small percentage of infected people, according to the largest contact tracing study in the country which also shows that children are key to the spread of the novel coronavirus.

 A major fire broke out at a chemical solvent manufacturing unit in Maharashtra's Pune district in the wee hours of Thursday, a fire brigade official said.

Researchers, including those from the Government of Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, have conducted one of the largest analysis of COVID-19 epidemiology to date, and have found that both cases and deaths due to the disease have been more heavily concentrated in the 40-69 year age group in India than is seen in high-income countries, among other trends.

 India's COVID-19 caseload breached the 63-lakh mark with 86,821 infections being reported in a day, while 52,73,201 people have recuperated so far from the disease, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday.

An Army jawan was killed and another injured when Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire and resorted to heavy firing and mortar shelling in forward areas along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district, officials said on Thursday.