PARIS, Feb 10: A Pakistani man went on trial in France on Tuesday for setting his ex-girlfriend alight after she refused to marry him, in a case that rights groups are using as a symbol of violence against women in poor neighbourhoods.

Amer Mushtaq Butt, 28, doused Chahrazade Belayni in petrol and set fire to her on the street as she was leaving her home in the under-privileged Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Marne in 2005.

She suffered third-degree burns on 60 per cent of her body, fell into a coma and underwent many operations. Belayni, now 21, works for the police.

“I want him to pay for what he did, not for my sake but to show other girls who have problems with their partners that it’s possible to fight back and the justice system won’t abandon them,” she told reporters before the trial.

The court rejected a request from Belayni that the hearings take place behind closed doors, causing her to burst into tears.

“He was so angry, he said he was going to kill me,” Belayni said at the hearing at Bobigny, outside Paris.“He hauled out a jerrycan and started chasing me” down the street, she said, sobbing. “My entire body caught fire.” She has since undergone painful skin grafts and in late 2006 tried to commit suicide.

Mushtaq Amer Butt also broke down in tears when he told the courtroom he intended to commit self-immolation when he confronted her on her way to work in Neuilly-sur-Marne, a Paris suburb.

“She told me ‘go ahead, set fire to yourself’,” he said. “I had brought it for me, not for her,” he said of the fuel canister.

“Forgive me please,” he implored in court shortly after Belayni had left.

Butt fled to Pakistan after the attack on Belayni but returned to France to hand himself in a year later. —Agencies.