Police arrested 10 people and charged six of them with raping a 21-year-old woman in southern India, police said on Friday, a year after a fatal gang rape in New Delhi spurred debate on sexual violence in the country.

Pondicherry Senior Superintendent of Police Monika Bharadwaj said the arrests were made on Thursday after the woman complained that she was abducted and raped while visiting a friend in Karaikal, a port city in Pondicherry state.

SSP Bhardwaj said that the woman has been hospitalised but that she did not suffer serious injuries.

Police have also detained a juvenile male for not informing the police about the crime.

SSP Bhardwaj said the woman was first kidnapped by three of the accused around midnight on Tuesday and released after nearly three hours of captivity.

As she called her friend to pick her up after she was freed, another group of seven people came in a vehicle and took her away.

Police were questioning the accused to find out whether they knew each other or belonged to two separate groups, SSP Bhardwaj said.

The assault came days after India marked the anniversary of the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi that triggered nationwide protests.

The outrage spurred the government to adopt more stringent laws that doubled prison terms for rape to 20 years and criminalised voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women. Fast-track courts have been created for rape cases.

Four attackers in the New Delhi case were sentenced to death and a juvenile was sent to a reform centre for three years.