A court in Indian-administered Kashmir sentenced four men to death Friday after they were convicted of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl which sparked protests across the region.

The four convicts, including two locals and two migrant laborers from West Bengal and Rajasthan, had been found guilty earlier this month of the 2007 killing near the de facto border with Pakistan, known as the Line of Control (LoC).

Police in Mumbai have arrested three officers who allegedly raped a model in a police station and then demanded several thousand dollars as blackmail to keep quiet, a deputy commissioner said Friday.

Three other men have also been arrested after the 29-year-old woman said the officers bundled her into a car as she was leaving an upmarket hotel in India's financial capital on April 3.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged all political parties Thursday to work together to help troubled farmers after one of them hanged himself at a protest over planned land reforms.

News channels were dominated by the fallout over Gajendra Singh's suicide the day before in front of hundreds of people at a rally against Modi's plans to make it easier for businesses to acquire land.

A powerful storm swept through India's eastern Bihar state overnight leaving at least 33 people dead and destroying crops and properties, officials and a report said Wednesday.

The storm lashed several districts across the impoverished state, uprooting trees and toppling power lines, the officials said.

India's government took Al Jazeera news channel off the air on Wednesday for five days after officials insisted it had repeatedly shown wrong maps of disputed Kashmir.

Al Jazeera in India showed a blue screen on Wednesday with a sign saying "as instructed by the ministry of information and broadcasting, this channel will not be available."

Hundreds of people in Pakistani Kashmir burnt India's flag and an effigy of its prime minister Sunday in protest at a crackdown on separatists in the Indian sector of the divided region.

Refugees from Indian-ruled Kashmir rallied under the banner of "Pasban-e-Hurriyat" (Protectors of Freedom) in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the  Pakistani sector.

Indian police shot dead a 16-year-old boy on Saturday during an anti-India demonstration in Kashmir as a separatist strike shut down the Himalayan region on a second day of violent clashes, officials said.

The uncle of the boy said police first detained his nephew before shooting him at point-blank range in front of dozens of other protesters.

Farmer Tarachand Mathur was one of millions of Indians who voted Narendra Modi into power last year, but the government's push to make it easier for big business to forcibly acquire land means he won't be backing the premier again.

Mathur, 64, believes Modi has turned his back on the plight of farmers, many of whom have seen their crops devastated by unseasonal rains since the start of this year.

Demonstrators set fire to an Indian flag and hurled rocks at riot police in Kashmir's largest city Friday as protests over the arrest of a top separatist leader turned violent.

Hundreds took to the streets of Srinagar, capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, to vent their anger at Masarat Alam Bhat's detention after he fronted a rally earlier in the week where followers waved Pakistani flags.

Vandals who attacked a northern Indian church wrapped a dog chain around the neck of a Virgin Mary statue, police said Thursday, in the latest assault on Christian places of worship in Hindu-majority India.

Police said several statues were damaged and their glass cases broken inside the grounds of St. Mary's church in the overnight attack in the tourist city of Agra, home to the famed Taj Mahal.