Acid crime: Two sisters get acid burns ‘in accident’

Father initially accuses old rivals of attack.

FAISALABAD:

Two girls received acid burns in an accident in the Sadar police area on Sunday.

Saddar SHO Sibtain Shah told The Express Tribune that the girls’ father, Allah Ditta Macchi, a tailor, told the police on Sunday that his daughters Faiza Kanwal, 13, and Kashaf Kalsoom, 5, were sleeping on the roof when some men came and threw acid on them.

According to Macchi, the girls sustained several burn injuries and the assailants managed to runaway. The girls were taken to the divisional headquarters hospital for treatment.
Police spokesperson Aamir Waheed said that a police team had rushed to the scene. He said that Macchi had told them that he thought that his rivals Tariq Mehmood and Noor Bakhi, who lived in the same colony, had carried out the attack.


Waheed said that Noor Bakhi and Mehmood were taken into custody and interrogated. However, it appeared that they were innocent. They said that it was possible that Macchi had tried to frame them. Police then added Maachi to their list of suspects.
“Macchi confessed that his daughters had received the burn injuries while he was preparing some cleaning and bleaching solutions at his house,” Waheed said.

“Macchi said that he was preparing the solutions on a stove and had poured acid in it. The pot blew up and the acid splattered the girls who were sitting next to the stove,” Waheed said.
He said that the police conducted a raid at Allah Ditta’s and recovered two gallons of acid and other materials used to prepare cleaning and bleaching solutions.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 6^th, 2013.