close
Friday March 29, 2024

Girl attacked with acid for refusing marriage proposal

By our correspondents
July 22, 2016

Perpetrator, who had been detained by police on victim’s complaint last month,

was released from custody three days ago

Karachi

A teenage girl was reported to have received 50 percent burn wounds after a man threw acid at her for daring to reject his marriage proposal, insider her residence located in Khwaja Ajmer Nagri, on Thursday.

Sixteen-year-old Sana, daughter of Abdul Ghafoor, was attacked by her landlord’s son, Usman.

Arrested by the Sir Syed Town police following the incident, the boy had been released from jail only three days ago where he was sent last month after the girl had complained of his misbehaviour.

The girl was taken to the Civil Hospital by her parents in a critical condition where the medico-legal officer confirmed that 50 percent of her chest and face were burnt. She was currently being treated at the hospital’s Burns Ward.

With lax laws and even shoddier implementation affording perpetrators freedom to operate, gender-based violence remains rampant in Pakistan and females bear the brunt of what truly is a matter of national shame.

In 2015, as monitored by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 939 women became victims of sexual violence, 279 of domestic violence, 143 women were attacked with acid or were set on fire, 833 women were kidnapped, and 987 cases of honour crimes occurred in which a staggering majority of victims were women.

In July last year, a teenage girl's ex-fiancé, a policeman, threw acid on her, her brother and a child following her family’s refusal of his marriage proposal. Raheela, 19, was returning home from a beauty parlour when police constable Zeeshan alias Ali, who was posted at the Boat Basin police station, threw acid on her, her brother Jan Muhammad and nephew Hadi in Metroville II, Abul Hassan Ispahani Road.

Acid attacks are made possible by the easy availability of acid as a cheap cleaning fluid, or for use in the cotton industry. Laws introduced last year set a minimum sentence of 14 years and a maximum of life for acid attacks, but owing to the dysfunctional legal system just 10 percent of cases make it to the courts.Unless and until the issue is taken and considered seriously on the part of the rulers, governments, law department, prosecutors and courts the heinous crime of throwing acid on the faces and bodies of the people, particularly women, cannot be controlled.

Acid throwers are going unchecked due to one reason or the other and a number of such cases are pending with different courts for disposal.

Though the laws dealing with such offences have now been made stricter, there is a dire need for timely disposal of such trials so that the victim families could get justice and the acid throwers the punishment for their crime.

In an incident, four men facing trial for the heinous crime of acid-throwing had managed to slip away from the City Courts premises after a sessions judge rejected their bail applications.