Additional Sessions Judge G P Thareja, while handing out the death sentence to Sushil Kumar on Friday, said the convict deserved no leniency because he had "profaned" his wife Naina Sahni's body by burning it in a tandoor on July 2, 1995.

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He wrote in the judgment: "A dead body is respected in this country. Everyone reveres a dead body on its last journey. By burning the dead body, the accused intended that Naina Sahni should go unwept, unsung and unheard."

He said it was not a case where the "accused has committed the crime and, thereafter, left the dead body so that it is properly disposed off according to the customs of the society to which the deceased belong".

"Profaning the dead body by burning in tandoor of a helpless and hapless woman whom the convict exploited for his own political career is an insult to womanhood," he wrote. "Sentence of death is only appropriate sentence."