![]() ![]() Taunting her for the pride she took in her appearance, he threatened to throw acid on her. He took this as the final insult from my family and swore revenge,” she explains. “I pushed a girl who my cousin had brought along to the wedding, and was refusing to pay a token auspicious amount at the altar. A small disagreement quickly took on a much darker hue. After a rowdy bout of drinking, a quarrel broke out within the family, particularly enraging an 18-year-old cousin of Lalita’s. ![]() In 2012, she and her mother travelled to her maternal village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to attend the wedding of a relative. Lalita’s quick grin and ebullience dim as she describes the series of events that led to her attack. These are aimed only at restoring functionality and preventing infection the question of cosmetic procedures remains a far-off uncertainty. Her doctor says she will need about 30 more to repair the damage, including recreating her ears, which the acid melted off. With approximately 25 medical procedures behind her, Lalita is approaching the midway point of her treatment plan. She is scheduled to undergo surgery on her nose the next day, scarred and swollen to twice its original size by an acid attack over two years ago. She wears an indigo-dyed hospital gown and a thin shawl that does little to conceal her injuries. Twenty-three-year-old Lalita Benbansi sits in the waiting room of a dimly lit doctor’s clinic in Grant Road, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Mumbai. ‘Before this I was extremely shy, but I don’t have that luxury anymore’ For hundreds of people across the country, that’s all it takes for their lives to be changed irrevocably in a second. But implementation remains a distant reality and numerous investigations have shown that acid is easily purchased in shops, with no questions asked, for as little as Rs 20 (3 cents) a bottle. The Supreme Court of India passed a ruling in July 2013, which among other provisions, regulates the sale of concentrated acid in shops, mandates the maintenance of a register recording details of purchasers, and prohibits the sale of acid to minors. ![]() It remains a highly gendered form of violence, however, with perpetrators almost always male, and victims primarily female. While such cases still form the largest single reason for acid violence, Alok Dixit of the Stop Acid Attacks campaign says cases of professional jealousy and family squabbles have also become motivators, and there has been a rapid rise in cases of men attacking other men. Historically, acid attacks have been acts of revenge over perceived rejection by a woman. The Stop Acid Attacks campaign claims there have been 386 cases in the period 2013 to 2014. The Acid Survivors Foundation India (ASFI) has collated data from newspaper reports that indicates a clear growth in the number of cases – with 80 victims in 2010, 106 in 2011 as well as 2012, 122 in 2013 and 130 up until November of 2014. But acid survivor support groups say these figures are misleading and do not account for the many cases that go unreported, as well as those involving male victims. The Indian government confirmed the number of female acid attack victims as 98 in 2011, 85 in 2012 and 80 in 2013. Reliable statistics for the crime are difficult to ascertain. In India, however, the number of reported cases has been increasing despite the existence of laws and directives to curb the horrors of acid violence.Įffective from February 2013, with the insertion of Section 326A into the Indian penal code, acid attacks have been classified as a distinct, specific offence, carrying a penalty of imprisonment for a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life. With harsh punishments and strict guidelines controlling the sale of acid, Bangladesh is viewed as a success story in the making, having seen a steady decline of 20 percent to 30 percent in the past few years. While instances of acid attacks have been reported in nearly all parts of the world, they are particularly endemic to South Asia, with Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Cambodia having the dubious distinction of the highest number of cases. Topmost among the changes they were calling for was stricter regulation of the availability of acid. Some were detained by the police and allegedly beaten for not obtaining the proper permissions to protest. They were survivors of acid attacks and volunteers with the Stop Acid Attacks awareness campaign. Only five days earlier, a small group of people had gathered outside India’s parliament bearing a list of demands.
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