MUMBAI: An Indian court sentenced a man to death on Thursday for murdering a woman by throwing acid on her face after she rejected his marriage proposal, in a landmark judgement. Ankur Panwar was found guilty on Tuesday of hurling sulphuric acid on 24-year-old Preeti Rathi in a fit of jealousy outside a railway station in the financial capital Mumbai in May 2013.

Rathi, who was a neighbour of Panwar’s in New Delhi and had just arrived in Mumbai to start a new job as a nurse, died in hospital of multiple organ failure the following month.

“The court has awarded the death penalty to Ankur Panwar. I convinced the court that the acid attack belonged to the rarest of rare cases,” public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said.

The Supreme Court says capital punishment should only be carried out in “the rarest of rare” cases in India, among a dwindling group of nations that still have the death penalty on their statute books.

“This is a landmark judgement for such crimes. This is the first time that such a judgement has been passed for an acid attack-related case against a woman,” said Nikam.

Activists welcomed the sentence which they said would go a long way to preventing future attacks, but criticised the length of time taken to bring the offender to justice.

“It is a welcome judgement but it has come too late. It took a fast-track court three years to punish the guilty,” said Sonali Mukherjee, whose own face was severely disfigured in 2003 by a group of men who have been convicted but are on bail pending an appeal.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2016