Shaheen Malik knows her face tells a story. She summarises it in a line when she’s invited to speak to students: “I wanted to do something different in life and some people didn’t like it.” A stranger outside her office, his face partly covered with a handkerchief, threw acid on her in 2009, melting half her face and blinding her right eye. The eye was sealed forever. Acid attacks are all about control, she says, now an expert on the cruel gender-based crime that largely targets a woman’s face. She accused her boss and his wife of masterminding the attack. Malik was 26, with a life plan and a freshly-minted MBA, the first graduate in her cloistered Delhi neighbourhood, when she was attacked.
Perpetrators know their crime will mark their victims for life. “It stays on your face forever,” says Malik, 41. “Nobody can identify a rape survivor, but acid attack survivors face discrimination continuously.”
Now, when someone stares at her or the girls she helps train through her three-year-old non-profit, Brave Souls Foundation, set up to aid survivors of this uniquely Southeast Asian crime, they meet the stare and ask, “Do you want to know anything?” Brave Souls, backed by the Population Foundation of India and Azim Premji Foundation among others, runs two shelter homes. It has helped 400 survivors, assisted in about 200 surgeries and is fighting some 200 court cases across India. “We are doing the government’s work, stepping up for their failures since they don’t want to listen to us,” says Malik. There were 202 acid attacks in 2022 and 71 attempted attacks, according to latest data.
Building confidence
People still react badly to acid attack survivors and Malik is a repository of such stories. Like the one about the passengers on a train who didn’t allow a survivor from Uttar Pradesh to take a seat, forcing her to sit on the floor. Or the woman on the Delhi Metro who walked up to a survivor and demanded that she cover her face. “Look elsewhere if you don’t like my face,” the survivor replied. Even as Malik grapples with loneliness, work is her life. She teaches survivors to stop covering their faces and builds their confidence so they can tackle what awaits them outside.
Most importantly, she makes it a point to tell young boys that they shouldn’t think a girl rejecting them is the end of their life. And that nothing gives anyone the right to throw acid on another human being. The majority of the world’s acid attacks occur in India and the single largest factor behind these attacks is rejection of ‘love’.
“If I remember my childhood now, I feel happy. My life became a struggle later,” she says. “I didn’t have very big dreams. I wanted to study, work — and have a little freedom.” She grew up in a neighbourhood where most girls didn’t study beyond school. At some point in her fight to break this norm, she realised that she would never be a doctor. “I had no guidance, my parents were not serious about my studies.” Through sheer grit and via correspondence, she got a BA and, in 2007, left home to pursue an MBA in Panipat, Haryana. She worked as a student counsellor to pay the bills. She says her boss became obsessed with her and, after two years of trying to leave, she finally succeeded. She was serving her notice period when the attack happened.
25 surgeries later
The time after that passed in a blur. The law recognising acid attacks came into effect only in 2013. The police showed little interest. Her family was not supportive. She herself was focused on the unending medical emergency that follows an acid attack — 25 surgeries, 10 of them to rescue her left eye which needs lifelong medication. It was only after four years that she got help from a judicial magistrate and recorded her statement again. Fifteen years and some courtroom character assassination later, her case continues in a district court in north west Delhi. “I never saw any regret in my perpetrators’ eyes,” she says, and that makes her more determined to keep fighting.
Eventually, she connected with fellow acid attack survivor Laxmi, and began meeting more survivors. She then worked with the Human Rights Law Network and ran the Delhi Commission of Women’s acid watch cell, feeling relief every time she could get a survivor compensation or access to medical treatment.
Thanks to the efforts of activists, Punjab now offers a pension for survivors and the Jharkhand government bears treatment expenses. But Malik’s dream is that acid sales be banned. In 2020, she filed a Public Interest Litigation seeking a ban on over-the-counter sales of acid in retail stores across Delhi. “A total ban could have unintended consequences, affecting sectors where acid is responsibly and safely utilised,” the court said. “Therefore, striking a balance between public safety and the legitimate use of acid for industrial and other regulated purposes is crucial.”
Malik is not impressed. “There are alternatives to toilet cleaning and blockage,” she says. “Demonetisation, which affects so many more people, can happen in one day but we can’t ban acid?” She plans to try again.
The columnist is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
Published – October 24, 2024 01:14 pm IST
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