University student Santadevi Meghwal has been threatened, harassed, ostracized and even fined by a council of male elders in her village in India.

But the 20-year-old is determined to push ahead with annulling her child marriage, and join a small but growing number of youngsters in northern India rejecting the ancient tradition.

A toddler and a five-year-old girl were raped in separate attacks in New Delhi overnight with at least one gang-raped, police said Saturday, as activists warned of an "epidemic" of sexual violence in the capital.

The two-and-a-half-year-old girl was abducted from a religious event in west Delhi by two men on Friday night and raped before being dumped in a park near her home, relatives and police said.

Government forces in Indian-administered Kashmir on Thursday killed two former police officers in a gunbattle after the men deserted the force to join rebels in the restive territory.

Inspector general of police Danish Rana said the two men had abandoned the force to join the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is banned in India.

India said Friday it had lodged a protest with authorities in Riyadh after a maid from Tamil Nadu allegedly had her hand chopped off by her Saudi employer for complaining about her work conditions.

India's foreign minister deplored a "brutal" attack on 55-year-old Kasthuri Munirathinam, who is being treated at a hospital in Riyadh, and which comes weeks after a Saudi diplomat based in New Delhi was accused of rape.

Militants have killed one of Indian Kashmir's most senior police officers, credited with hundreds of successful anti-insurgency operations in the restive region, police said Thursday.

Gunmen opened fire on sub-inspector Mohammad Altaf during a covert operation against a top rebel in Kashmir's northern Bandipore area on Wednesday and he later died in hospital, officers said.

Extra police and paramilitaries were deployed to the Indian holy city of Varanasi Tuesday after nearly 50 people were injured during riots in which a police post was torched and dozens of vehicles damaged.

The violence broke out on Monday night when police fired tear gas at a group of holy men known as sadhus who were protesting at the authorities' refusal to allow them to immerse idols in the River Ganges last month.

An Indian court Wednesday sentenced five men to death for a series of blasts that ripped through packed trains in Mumbai in 2006 and killed nearly 200 people, the Press Trust of India reported.

Another seven found guilty of involvement in the attacks in India's financial capital were sentenced to life imprisonment by the special court, the news agency said.

India successfully launched Monday its first high-tech telescopes into space to study the stars, as New Delhi seeks to take another major step in its ambitious and low-cost space program.

A rocket carrying the 150-tonne mini space observatory called Astrosat, along with six foreign satellites, blasted off on schedule from India's main southern spaceport of Sriharikota.

Hundreds of protesters blocked a major trading checkpoint between India and Nepal Friday, cutting off vital supplies to the landlocked Himalayan nation, as anger deepened over the country's new constitution.

The protesters, who belong to the Madhesi community, are angry about plans to divide the country into seven federal provinces under the charter adopted on Sunday. 

Prime Minister Tammam Salam was in New York on Friday to attend the opening of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015.

The summit is aimed at formally approving an ambitious and costly 15-year blueprint to eradicate extreme poverty, combat climate change and address more than a dozen other major global issues.