Asian Window

Jessica Salter from Dhaka in the Telegraph:

She was attacked by her husband of 15 years on her way home from a garment factory where they both work. “He is a drug addict and has been for a long time. All of the time he asks me for money and for things. He usually beats me to get my money,” she says through an interpreter.

“On that day he again was asking me for money, and I had said no. That day I went to work, finished work, and when I went to leave he was waiting for me. He attacked me with acid straight in my face.”

Lucky, who is 26 and a mother to two young sons, was helped by people on the street. When she got home her village leader told her to go to the police who referred her to a special hospital and rehabilitation centre for victims in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, run by a charity.

Her story is depressingly common for retired British plastic surgeon Ron Hiles, who has operated on hundreds of acid attack victims – mostly women. Last year the small 40-bed clinic in Dhaka, called the Acid Survivors’ Foundation (ASF), treated 700 patients. “There are a lot of women called Lucky and Beauty who come to the clinic who have had their faces destroyed by an acid burn,” he says. More:

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