The Supreme Court on Monday condemned the “appalling” way the Bihar government and its law enforcement apparatus in 2012 treated a Dalit girl who suffered 90 per cent acid burns on her face in a brutal attack by four men who for months “terrorised” her with sexual advances.
The Supreme Court directed States and Union Territories to include acid attack victims in the social justice ministry's disability list to access government welfare schemes and reservation in jobs and education centres. The judgment held that “compensation must not only be awarded in terms of the physical injury, we have also to take note of victim’s inability to lead a full life as a result of the acid attack.”
A Bench of Justices M.Y. Eqbal and C. Nagappan castigated the Centre and the States for the easy availability of acid, the rampant use of the corrosive substance to destroy innocent lives and the total lack of legal guarantee to free medical care and rehabilitation and inadequate compensation schemes for survivors.
The judgment by Justice Eqbal narrated how the victim, Chanchal, dreamt of being a computed engineer and attended college regularly while helping her family make ends meet by working as a daily wage earner.
Her four assailants had under the cover of darkness on October 2012 sneaked into the roof of her house, where she and her sister were sleeping, overpowered her, poured acid on her face and body – some of which fell on her sister lying nearby - and then stayed back to “enjoy” as both girls shrieked with pain.
The judgment related how the family, who rushed the girls to the hospital, had to wait till the next morning for the doctors to arrive. It said the treatment was slipshod, and finally Chanchal had to be shifted to Delhi for extensive surgeries. Justice Eqbal wrote that the Bihar Police arrested the accused persons only a month after the attack following intense media and public furore. The State Police did not take the victim's statement despite an assurance from the Inspector General of Police.
The judgment said the State government coughed up Rs. 2.42 lakh for Chanchal's treatment, when the family had already spent over Rs. 5 lakh to revive her.
The Bench noted how “the very sight of the victim is traumatizing for us”.
“If we could be traumatized by the mere sight of injuries caused to the victim by the inhumane acid attack on her, what would the situation of the victim be... Perhaps, we cannot judge,” Justice Eqbal observed in the judgment.
The judgment empathised with the humiliation the young girl would have to face throughout her life, and said it could not be compensated with money.
However, the Supreme Court, in this judgment, upped the scale of the government's liability towards an acid victim by ordering the Bihar government to pay a total 13 lakh to the two sisters.
Earlier this year in another case, the Supreme Court had put the minimum compensation payable to acid attack victims at Rs. 3 lakh.
“State shall upon itself take full responsibility for the treatment and rehabilitation of the victims of acid attack,” Justice Eqbal added.
The apex court has already clarified that no private hospitals should deny free treatment to acid attack victims, and “free treatment” means not only medical treatment, but also availability of medicines, food and reconstructive surgery”.
