WARNING – DISTRESSING DETAILS: A court heard that the tragic woman was a victim of colourism, a form of discrimination that favours light-skinned members of the same ethnic group
A court in India has sentenced a man to death for burning his wife alive after repeatedly humiliating her over her skin colour.
The man, known only as Kishandas, “routinely taunted” partner Lakshmi “for being dark skinned”, statements made before her death revealed. District Judge Rahul Choudhary handed down the death penalty, saying the horrific murder fell in the category of “rarest of the rare” and it was “a crime against humanity”.
The man, from the village of Navaniya, killed his wife in the northern city of Udaipur June 24, 2017. His lawyers maintain his innocence and vowed to appeal the judgement after the case made headline news in a country where colourism remains deeply entrenched in society.
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Lakshmi previously said her husband called her “kali” – which means dark skinned – and often bodyshamed her. They married back in 2016. On the night of her death eight years ago, Kishandas brought a plastic bottle with a brown liquid which he told was a medicine to make her skin fairer, it was claimed in court.
He then applied the liquid to her body, set her on fire with an incense stick and poured the rest over her as she began to burn, statements said. He then ran away, before her parents and sister discovered what had happened and rushed her to hospital where she later died.
“It will not be an exaggeration to say that this heart-rending brutal crime was not just against Lakshmi, but it’s a crime against humanity,” Judge Choudhary said in his order. “It’s a crime that shocks the conscience of humanity which cannot even be imagined in a healthy and civilised society.”
The order has been forwarded to the high court for confirmation of the death sentence. He has 30 days to appeal. Public prosecutor Dinesh Paliwal described the order as “historic” and wants it to act as “a lesson for others in society”.
“A young woman in her early 20s was murdered brutally – she was someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, there were people who loved her. If we don’t save our daughters, then who would?” he told the BBC.
Kishandas’s lawyer Surendra Kumar Menariya told the corporation that the woman’s death had been accidental and there was “no evidence against his client who had been falsely charged”.
Colourism is a form of discrimination that favours light-skinned members of the same ethnic group. India’s issue of violence against women and girls is said to be growing, with date released last year suggesting that one in three women in the country are likely to have been subjected to violence at the hands of an ‘intimate partner’.