A haunting experience: A year on, acid attack victims relive the horror every day

Children are not normally attacked with acid; they usually become indirect victims

KARACHI: A year and a half after the cruel incident, four-year-old Ahmed continues to wake up in the middle of the night, instinctively rubbing and scratching his scathing back.

The tingling, burning sensation of burnt skin and blisters continues to trouble him and he winces in agony. Sleeping next to him, Ruqaiyya, a disfigured body, controls her own cries as she whimpers consolatory words to him. She is now used to being woken up in this manner, every odd night.

It is not often that children in Karachi are made victims of acid attacks. In this rare, yet disturbing case, Ahmed and his three brothers found themselves in the middle of an attack on their mother, Ruqaiyya, who was doused with a bottle of corrosive acid. The perpetrator was none other than their own father, whose actions left them with a haunting and painful memory for life.

“Asghar nay tayzaab pekha [Asghar threw acid],” came the boy’s meek reply, calling his father by his first name. “I don’t miss him,” he adds dismissively, hastily running out of the room.

One night last April, Ruqaiyya was sleeping on the floor in the almost barren room in Nusrat Bhutto Colony, when her husband, who wanted her committee money, doused her with acid, aided by his two brothers. In the attack that left the woman with 27 per cent burn injuries, a disfigured face, a damaged left eye, and severely burnt chest and legs, her sons also suffered splashes of acid on their faces and bodies.

“The cruel man did not even care for his own children,” said the woman, hiding her disfigured face with her chaddar as she sat on a charpoy.

The children and their mother were admitted to the burns ward at Civil Hospital, Karachi. Three of the children were slightly injured in the attack; the youngest, Ahmed, was left with a burnt scalp and back. The Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), an organisation supporting acid attack survivors in the country, says one of the major reasons why children become victims is when they come in the middle and are indirectly attacked.

“In many incidents when women are attacked, her children are close to her and also face the consequences. In very few incidents are children directly attacked, largely in the cases of early child marriages,” explained Zainab Qaiserani, the project coordinator of the organisation.

Along with physical deformity, witnessing or being a victim of an acid attack can leave the children severely traumatised, she added.

In this household, the children become frightened whenever they see a bottle. “If they see any liquid in a bottle, even it is a soft drink, they think it is acid,” said the children’s aunt.

The word tayzab has also seeped in their street game of chor police. The robbers threaten to douse the police with acid, she continued.

Ahmed and his brothers were lucky to escape without any major injuries. The incharge of Civil hospital’s Burns Ward, Dr Ehmer Al Ibran, who treated them, said they could have just as easily succumbed to their injuries. “If children are attacked with acid, they cannot stand it and the effects can be devastating.”

Dr Ibran advised victims to take practical first-aid measures in case they come into contact with a corrosive substance. “When there is contact with any chemical, water should be immediately and gently splashed on it till the burning sensation or the chemical is washed off,” he said, adding that water should be carefully poured in between fingers, area under the nails, scalp, and on joints to ensure all the acid is washed away.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2014.