Voting for the fourth phase of panchayat polls in Bihar was held on Saturday under the shadow of the gunning down of a candidate late last night in Vishanpur village in Khagaria district.

A teenage girl was on Wednesday beheaded with a sharp weapon by her spurned lover, an engineering student from Jamshedpur, on the campus of Ranchi’s illustrious St Xavier’s College.

Four people were killed and over 20 others injured on Wednesday as the police fired at a rampaging mob protesting against the ongoing anti-encroachment drive in the coal city of Dhanbad in eastern Jharkhand. Curfew was clamped on the city in the evening as the police feared violent retaliations from the people.

Two people were killed and dozens were injured in clashes during the second phase of panchayat polls in Bihar on Sunday.

After rising to the ruling BJP’s Assembly election manifesto last year, the humble goat in Bihar is now set to enrich the state’s rural economy with its nutritious milk.

Senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh on Saturday defended Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the face of fresh allegations about his letting the state’s Hindus vent their anger in the 2002 post-Godhra riots, suggesting that the charges bore no truth.

After three people were killed in violence related to the ongoing panchayat polls in Bihar on Friday night, the state government has beefed up security arrangements for the second phase of the polls being held on Sunday.

Maoist violence leading to the death of a police officer and a woman and sporadic incidents of bomb blasts, bids to capture booths and voters’ clashes with the police marked the first phase of panchayat polls in Bihar on Wednesday. An average 55 per cent voting was registered.

Wearing strings of carrots and sporting a weird haircut known locally as the “Ghazni hair”, Shivanand Yadav walked door to door to ask people to vote for him on the carrot symbol assigned to him. In Ekdanga panchayat of Barh near Patna, Mr Yadav hopes to turn lucky in the panchayat polls that he has lost twice earlier.

Voting in the c began on Wednesday morning but the generally peaceful exercise was marred by a bomb blast and some sporadic incidents of violence, officials said.

"Nearly 27 per cent of the electorat