India's volatile western state of Gujarat was on a high alert on Tuesday as it prepared to receive the bodies of eight Hindu pilgrims who were killed in twin blasts in the country's financial capital Bombay.

The victims had finished a pilgrimage to the town of Nasik where thousands of Hindus have been gathering for a holy dip in a river, and were on a sightseeing trip in Bombay when they were caught in the explosions.

K.Chakravarthy, police chief of Gujarat which in 2002 witnessed the worst Hindu-Muslims clashes in a decade, said policemen had been posted along the route where the bodies of the eight Gujaratis would be returned to their home town of Surendranagar.

More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died when Hindu mobs went on a rampage of revenge across Gujarat after 59 Hindu pilgrims were burned to death in a train by a suspected Muslim mob in the Gujarati town of Godhra.

"We are quite conscious of what happened post-Godhra, how the bodies came and how violence began," said Chakravarthy.

"The stepped up vigil will continue for a few days," he said, adding that more police had been deployed at religious sites.

Local newspapars said the eight Gujaratis who died on Monday were posing for pictures near Bombay's landmark Gateway of India when a taxi laden with explosives blew up. Three of the dead were brothers.

Another bomb went off in a taxi parked in a crowded jewelry market dominated by Gujaratis. At least 48 people died in the two blasts and more than a hundred were injured.

Tens of thousands of Hindus have taken part in the Kumbh Mela or Grand Pitcher Festival in Nasik, north-east of Bombay, since it began last month under tight security.

Indian legend says Nasik was one of the four places where the nectar of immortality fell to earth after spilling from a pitcher as gods and demons fought over the vessel.

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