India's Supreme Court on Friday ordered the country's notoriously overcrowded jails to free all inmates who have served half their maximum term without trial, in a landmark ruling with implications for hundreds of thousands of prisoners.

More than two-thirds of India's nearly four million prisoners are awaiting trial, according to Amnesty International, and many have already spent years in prison.

An Indian court on Thursday freed three men detained earlier this year on suspicion of raping and murdering two teenage girls found hanged outside their village, in a case that sparked global outrage.

Judge Anil Kumar Sharma ordered the men's release after India's top investigator, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said it did not have enough evidence to prosecute them.

The head of the newly-created South Asia branch of Al-Qaida, Asim Umar, is a Pakistani ideologue who has produced a number of online calls to jihad but has a relatively low profile.

Umar -- an alias -- was named by Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a video message as the leader of the network's new operation which will try to rouse fighters in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Flood waters swept an overcrowded bus carrying a wedding party into a gorge on Thursday with all but six of the 50 on board feared dead in Indian Kashmir, officials said.

Rescue teams have been deployed to the flooded gorge south of Kashmir's main city of Srinagar but they have so far been unable to reach the bus, police said.

As he set up shop in Kashmir's main city Thursday, Saleem Ahmed had little truck with Al-Qaida's call to turn India's only Muslim-majority state a key battlefield of a new jihad across South Asia.

"Ours is not an Islamic war for Ummah (a global Islamic nation)," said Ahmed as he laid out his wares on the street by his clothing store in Srinagar's central business district.

India placed several states on high alert on Thursday after Al-Qaida launched a new branch to "wage jihad" in South Asia, seeking to invigorate its waning Islamist extremist movement.

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri said the new operation would take the fight to Myanmar, Bangladesh and India, which has a large but traditionally moderate Muslim population.

Police have arrested three men over the suspected rape and murder of a teenager who had protested against village elders' harassment of her father in India's east, an officer said Wednesday.

One of two Italian marines detained in India over the fatal shooting of two fishermen has been hospitalized in New Delhi, according to the defense ministry in Rome and one of his lawyers.

In a development which will increase domestic pressure on the Italian government to bring the two marines home, Massimiliano Latorre collapsed on Sunday but was reported to be recovering in a neurology unit in the Indian capital.

Government forces in Indian Kashmir killed three suspected rebels Tuesday during a lengthy gun battle, police said, in the latest flare-up ahead of tense local elections later this year.

Soldiers cordoned off a house in Hanjan village, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar, on Monday evening after receiving a tip-off that militants were inside, a police officer told AFP.

Conservative soulmates Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe will hold formal talks in Tokyo Monday to cement a blossoming relationship between India and Japan, on a visit that began with a bear hug and a tour of Kyoto.

The personal chemistry on show during the five-day tour is increasingly reflected in the strengthening of bonds between two countries that bookend an ever-more assertive China.