A man who flung acid on a 23-year-old woman's face in 2013, causing her to suffer grievous injuries and ultimately die from the burns, has been given the death penalty by a Mumbai court. Ankur Panwar, 25, was sentenced to the death by hanging on Thursday after the court found him guilty of murdering his neighbour Preeti Rathi.
"I want him to suffer till the end just like my daughter did," the victim's father Amar Singh Rathi told NDTV. "If he is given a lighter sentence, it will not send the right message."
The 23-year-old woman, who was at the time travelling from Delhi to Mumbai to work as a nurse with the Indian Navy, had suffered in hospital for a month with agonising burn injuries to her face, throat and lungs before she succumbed on 2 May, 2013.
According to reports, Panwar had boarded the same train from Delhi as Preeti and her father and thrown acid on her at the Bandra station. He was arrested a year later. He was reportedly motivated by jealousy after he was mocked for being unemployed while Preeti did well professionally. He had apparently also asked Preeti to marry him once, but she had rejected his proposal.
Two months after Preeti's death, the Supreme Court of India had ordered governments at the state and the central level to regulate the sale of acid as hundreds of such attacks happen in India every year.