A court in India has given the death penalty to a man for burning alive his wife over her skin color.

In her statements before her death, Lakshmi had said that her husband Kishandas routinely taunted her for being dark skinned.

District Judge Rahul Choudhary in the northern city of Udaipur explained the death penalty saying the murder fell in the category of rarest of the rare and it was a crime against humanity.

Kishandas's lawyer told the BBC that his client was innocent and that they would appeal against the order.

Lakshmi's murder eight years back and the judgement, delivered at the weekend, have made headlines in a country where public obsession with colorism is well documented.

The attack on Lakshmi took place on the night of 24 June 2017, according to the court order seen by the BBC.

The judgement quotes from the statements she gave before her death to the police, the doctors and an executive magistrate.

Lakshmi said her husband often called her kali or dark-skinned and body-shamed her since their marriage in 2016.

On the night she died, Kishandas had brought a plastic bottle with a brown liquid - he said it was a medicine to make her skin fairer.

According to the statements, he applied the liquid to her body and when she complained that it smelled like acid, he set her on fire with an incense stick. When her body started burning, he poured the rest of the liquid on her and ran away.

Kishandas's parents and sister took her to hospital where she later died.

Judge Choudhary stated that this heart-rending brutal crime was not just against Lakshmi, but a crime against humanity. He emphasized Kishandas's betrayal of trust and excessive cruelty during the act.

Public prosecutor Dinesh Paliwal praised the order as historic, hoping it would serve as a lesson for others in society.

The Udaipur court order has once again put the spotlight on India’s unhealthy preference for fair skin. Girls and women with darker skin tones often face discrimination and derogatory names. This societal bias is perpetuated by the demand for light-skinned brides in matrimonial columns and the booming business of skin lightening products.

Recent years have seen campaigns challenging ingrained beauty standards, but changing deeply rooted prejudices remains a significant challenge.