Thieves stole some of Mahatma Gandhi's remains on what would have been his 150th birthday, police say.

The ashes were taken from a memorial in central India, where they had been kept since 1948 - the year of Gandhi's assassination by a Hindu extremist.

The thieves also scrawled "traitor" in green paint across photographs of the independence leader.

Some Hindu hardliners view Gandhi as a traitor for his advocacy of Hindu-Muslim unity.