Indian sisters send father to jail for burning mother alive

• Man burns wife for "not giving birth to a son".
• Sisters wrote letter to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in blood, seeking justice for her mother.
• Girls tell court their father used to frequently beat up their mother.

In a bid to seek justice for the murder of their mother six years after the incident, two girls in India have penned a letter to the chief minister of their state.

Latika Bansal, 21, and her little sister sent their father, Manoj Bansal, to jail for life for murdering their mother.

Bansal doused his wife, Anu Bansal, in kerosene oil and set her on fire for "not giving birth to a son".

The girls told the court their father used to frequently beat up their mother. Bansal denied the accusations and said his wife had died by suicide, NDTV reported. 

Latika was 15-year-old from Bulandshahr and her sister, 11, when they wrote a letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in blood, seeking justice for her mother.

On June 14, 2016 at 6:30am, the younger sister said: “We were woken up by the cries of our mother. We couldn't help her because the door of our room was locked from the outside. We watched her burn.”

Latika said their calls to the local police and ambulance services went ignored. So they called their maternal uncle and grandmother who quickly took their mother to the hospital.

According to doctors who treated her, Anu had received 80% burns. She died a few days later in hospital.

"It's taken us six years, one month and 13 days to finally get justice," Sanjay Sharma, the lawyer who represented the sisters in court, told the BBC.