A court has sentenced a priest to death for sacrificing a nine-year-old child to appease a deity in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
A lawyer said the state's High Court upheld the sentence imposed by a lower court, saying it was a case of extreme culpability which rendered life imprisonment inadequate.
"The murder ... was definitely extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting and dastardly so as to arouse indignation," the court said.
The priest was said to have sacrificed the boy in order to please a goddess.
The killing happened in the Jamtara district, nearly 200km from the state capital Ranchi.
He was booked by the police on a complaint lodged by the child's parents and initially sentenced to death by a Jamtara court.