THE PUBLIC SECTOR AWARD Chief Inspector Parm Sandhu: Met’s highest-ranking Asian woman. ENTREPRENEURS Humerah Khan and Sumerah Ahmad: The sisters co-founded Club Asia. YOUNG ACHIEVER Damini Kumar: In 1999, the 29-year-old invented the world’s first non-drip teapot. MEDIA PROFESSIONAL Fareena Alam: Managing editor of Muslim magazine Q-News. ARTS & CULTURE AWARD Shaheen Khan: The actress who played a mother in the film Bend it Like Beckham. PROFESSIONAL Professor Nazneen Rahman: Researcher in childhood cancers, 38. BUSINESS WOMAN Anila Wickramasinghe: Founder of ReOrient Legal, which provides Shariah consultancy.

SOCIAL AND HUMANITARIAN Celine Samarasinhe: Founder of two community nursing services in Sri Lanka Aysin Yilmaz: Turkish Philanthropic Association.. A southern Russian court today said the sole surviving Beslan school attacker deserved the death penalty, but sentenced him to life in prison because of the country’s moratorium on capital punishment. Nur-Pashi Kulayev was found guilty of taking hostages, responsibility for the deaths of 330 people and of inflicting material damage worth 34 million rubles (£700,000).
North Ossetian Supreme Court Judge Tamerlan Aguzarov said that Kulayev had detonated a bomb that had dealt bodily harm to hostages and government troops. He said that 16 hostages whom the militants executed on the first day of the assault had died in part due to Kulayev’s actions. Kulayev was also found guilty of shooting children and other hostages who tried to escape the school on the chaos-filled third day of the crisis.

He had claimed in court that while he participated in the raid, he did not kill anyone. “Kulayev deserves the death penalty, but is sentenced to life in prison because a moratorium (on death penalty) is in place,” Aguzarov said. Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty for Kulayev, but Russia suspended the death penalty when it joined the Council of Europe a decade ago. Kulayev “acted calmly and adequately” during the trial and therefore “can bear responsibility,” Aguzarov said.