Is Acid The Right Way To Proclaim Your love?

Ek Khubsurat sa ehsaas thi main,

Uss zehar ki bottle ne iss khubsoorat inayat ko pal mein mita diya.

Beauty is power and a beautiful smile can capture zillion hearts. The true beauty is reflected in the soul. But what happens when both your soul and body is scarred forever? The life of a girl comes crumbling down when she realizes that she has been a victim of the acid attack. Reports of acid attack in India are constantly on a rise.

The thing that comes to our minds first is what makes people commit such heinous crimes.

Acid Attacks in India have devastated the lives of thousands of women and their only fault was that they rebuffed the marriage proposals, said no to sexual harassment. Just because it has been difficult for the big manly ego to handle rejection; doesn’t mean they have right to scar a woman forever. The patriarchal mindset has seeped deeply into the masses.

Based on a data provided by the National Crimes Record Bureau the number of acid attacks in 2014 is more than the total number of attacks in 2012 and 2013.

With the previous year’s incidents of acid attacks we have few more to add to the list in the year 2015. The recent incident of a 25 year old woman from Bhopal has been a victim of acid attack. The alleged was found dead after throwing the acid. The lady is now being treated for 50 percent burns she received during the attack.

Not only this, a 15 year old girl of West Bengal was attacked with acid and later stabbed by her stalker. A 19 year old girl from Uttar Pradesh alleged the son of a local Samajwadi worker to have thrown acid on her resulting in the burn injures on her face and body. Not only this, she even accused the guy to have kidnapped her 10 year old brother and now threatening her family to take back the charges.

This was just a glimpse of how every day we have some or the other news of girls being attacked with acid. This has become so common now that we often skip the news as if it’s now not something new to look into.

We think we are safe then what is the requirement to ponder over such issues. Just put your feet once in their shoes and you will realize how it feels to have gruesome burns and scars all over your body, to get rejected by the firms because of your disability. Even if the victims survive they are left to deal with the tantrums of the society. Why just the tantrums, the society completely shuns them out.

The most shocking thing is the easy accessibility of acids. The government definitely needs to take some major steps to prevent the easy access of acids.

We are thankful to “Beti” which is a step in a service to Womankind. Beti has extended their hands to help the acid attacks. In fact they raised a fund of rupees 30 lakh as a part of their “Project Hope” for the reconstruction surgery of the acid victim Sonali Mukherjee. When the acid victim Sonali Mukherjee had no hope left in her life Beti came up to her rescue. She is now happily married and is now living with a new hope.

We need more such campaigns to help the acid victims. Shows like Satyamev Jayate have given an opportunity to the acid victims to come up and speak for themselves.

Living without a face is not easy. So don’t be inhuman. You never know who will be the next victim, maybe someone from your family?

Written by,
Aishwarya Anand