KARACHI, Feb 15: Looking at Urooj Akbar and Saira Liaquat (you cannot help but flinch), one feels Maria Shah is better off dead. Unlike Maria, all three are survivors of acid/kerosene attacks. None of them have received even an iota of justice, while maybe Saira has received a little consolation — her attacker has been put behind bars.
Aslam Sanjrani, a rickshaw driver, threw acid on the 25-year old Maria Shah, who was a lady health worker from Shikarpur, for spurning his marriage proposal.
Shahnaz Bokhari of the Islamabad-based Progressive Women’s Association, who began working for acid and burn victims in 1994, calls this “plain murder”. Dr Waqar Ansari, head of the intensive care unit (ICU) of the burns ward at the Civil Hospital, supports the opinion: “These are never accidental.” He is looking after three such cases of acid attacks.
Anila Ansari, a legal expert with the Karachi Women Prisoners’ Welfare Society, has no doubt that Ms Shah’s attacker can be tried for attempted murder under Section 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code, where the punishment is 10 years, and also Section 302 of the PPC since Maria died. The maximum punishment is life imprisonment.
The Sindh health minister had stressed the need for more burns centres.
“Nobody says they want to halt this barbarism. Instead they want more such centres,” says Dr Waqar Ansari laconically.
Currently, there is only one public sector burns centre in Pakistan at the Civil Hospital, Karachi. The country still does not have a law that criminalises acid attacks. In August 2003, the Punjab Assembly passed legislation that termed an acid attack tantamount to attempted murder.
Perhaps with the Sindh chief minister’s announcement of the paltry sum of Rs100,000 as compensation to the victim’s family, the conscience of many will be cleansed and guilt-free. For others, another file of an acid attack victim has been conveniently closed.
Where is civil society?
But where is our vibrant civil society? Why is there no one to mark her death outside the press clubs; why are no women’s groups demanding justice for such a horrifying form of gender violence and no lawyers promising that they will fight till all Aslam Sanjranis get their due punishment?
The kind words of National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza, when she visited Maria at the hospital, and the same reassuring words of Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, who said the culprit would be taken to task, remain mere rhetoric.
While the Domestic Violence Bill is going through fine-tuning, it would be worthwhile to make stringent laws to cover acid attacks.
It would also be useful to look at Bangladesh, where they passed two laws (in 2002). The Acid Crime Prevention Act stipulates the death sentence as a maximum penalty for an assault.
And to control the easy availability of commercially used acid, including battery and sulphuric acid, the Acid Control Act has been enacted in Bangladesh, which mandates licences for sale and purchase of acids, with offenders facing a maximum of 15-years punishment as well as fines.
Experts say that throwing acid (usually sulphuric acid) is one of the most horrifying forms of gender-based violence. There is always a malicious intent to take revenge, disfigure and harm the person. It has long-lasting physical and psychological consequences say those working with survivors of such attacks.
The victims
Take the case of Urooj Akbar, who got married at the age of 17 and had just finished high school. Her husband, suspecting her of having an affair, was furious, at first for her not conceiving. Then, when she finally did conceive after two years, he was not sure if it was his child. His anger knew no bounds when she gave birth to a daughter.
“I cannot even begin to tell you what it’s like to be seared. There are no words that can explain the physical pain. Once that is over, the trauma and torture of seeing yourself in the mirror everyday is nothing short of qayamat,” is how Urooj explains her condition. She had 70 per cent burns and could not close her eyes or her mouth for a year.
“It’s a miracle she has survived to tell her tale,” says Musarrat Misbah, a beautician, who has helped Urooj with reconstructive surgery.
Fifteen operations and countless counselling sessions later, over a period of three gruelling years, she is now working in one of Misbah’s salons in Lahore. Her husband is as free as a bird and has kept their daughter.
Every time a new acid attack or burn case comes up, it reminds Shahnaz Bokhari of Zainab Noor’s case, whose husband, Qari Sharif, a religious leader, had inserted red-hot iron rods into her private parts and burned other parts of her body as punishment for complaining to friends about his treatment towards her. This was back in 1994.
While her husband – who was sentenced to 30 years by a court for damaging three body parts (uterus, urethra and ovaries) of rigorous imprisonment – roams about free after serving only six years and paying a fine of Rs630,000, Noor carries on with life, trudging with two bags – one for faeces and the other for urine.Saira Liaquat, a high-school student, was just 16, in 2003 when her betrothed threw acid on her face.
“I just asked for two more years so that she could complete her intermediate, that’s all,” says 52-year old Liaquat Ali, Saira’s father.
“I want his hands, with which he threw acid on my daughter. I also want his eyes, just the way my daughter lost hers,” said the rickshaw driver from Lahore. His eyes well up.
Liaquat got the culprit arrested. “He got seven years (he has done four years), but if you ask me, it is really nothing compared to what we all are going through. He should be hanged.”
“I agree, seven years is nothing,” says Shahnaz.
There are no countrywide statistics to show if the crime has escalated since most go unreported or at times the police refuse to register an FIR.
Ms Bokhari has recorded some 7,900 cases from 1994 to 2006. “But this is just the tip of the iceberg and only in the 200-mile radius of Islamabad.”
The gap in her statistics from 2006 to 2008 was not because the practice dropped for two years but because Shahnaz learnt that hospitals were asked not to admit burn victims.
“I had no proof so I could not make noise,” said Shahnaz. My doctor friends were scared that they would lose their jobs if they blurted something like that on record.
The image abroad
“Musharraf’s regime wanted to present a picture-perfect Pakistan abroad where no women’s rights violations took place. These harrowing crimes would really have stained the record!”
Shahnaz believes it is “learned behaviour” from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and India, where acid attacks were at their peak in the 1990s.
“Now they have somewhat restrained it through strict legislation and penalties. We, on the contrary, have just brushed it under the carpet.”
Bokhari says if justice is to be provided, it is important to make this a “non-compoundable offence”. She adds: “To save other women from it, it should be termed a crime against the state.”
Lawyer Anila Ansari agrees with Shahnaz. However, she adds that it cannot be made a crime against the state as it would mean taking away the individual’s rights. “That would be going against the Constitution of Pakistan.”
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