New Delhi, July 24 (IANS) A Delhi court has awarded three years' imprisonment to a painter who inflicted grievous injuries on his wife's face and body after a quarrel over a petty issue.

Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau sentenced Ravinder for attempt to commit culpable homicide and also fined him Rs.50,000.

The penalty would be paid by him to his wife Sandhya, the court said.

Sentencing Ravinder, the court said: "To say the wife is of a quarrelsome nature or to question her character is no justification for causing physical injury to her."

Lau said: "Wife beating is no longer a private affair...being legally outlawed in India it is unacceptable. There can be no justification for the same and wife bashers require to be socially exposed and publicly taken to task."

"A message is required to be sent, loud and clear that wife bashing has no place in a civilised society and violent husbands deserve no mercy," said the court, in an order delivered Saturday.

"Sandhya used to live at her parents' house along with her two children due to a matrimonial discord with Ravinder," said the prosecution.

On Dec 2, 2005, Sandhya went to her husband's house in Uttam Nagar in West Delhi to collect some of her documents. They had an argument and her husband, along with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, inflicted grievous injuries on her face and body with a trident, police said.

"In the present case, the extent of violence shown by Ravinder is unimaginable. The marital abuse which Sandhya has suffered is not merely a case of domestic spat but a criminal act of assault and violation of civil rights calling for punishment to be inflicted upon the convict as any other act of violence," said Judge Lau.

The court noted that Ravinder (44), had disfigured Sandhya's face with the trident, leading to her being hospitalised for 13 days. The injuries left her face permanently disfigured.

The court had earlier acquitted Ravinder's mother and sister of the charge of attempting to murder Sandhya.

The judge said violent husbands often get away lightly either because "women silently accept the same in order to save their marriage or the victim is financially handicapped and sending the husband to jail would mean the end of financial sustenance for herself and her children".