BAHAWALNAGAR: A man was arrested on Sunday for subjecting a married woman to acid attack for not responding to his advances, in which the victim’s sister-in-law and her brother-in-law were also injured, besides the attacker himself.

According to Faqirwali police, the suspect, Ameen, of 104/6R village had been harassing a married woman ‘S’ and forcing her to have a relationship with him.

The woman informed her husband and in-laws about the harassment, who tried to reason with the suspect but to no avail.

The police said that on Sunday ‘S’ was picking cotton in the fields with her sisters-in-law Safia, when the suspect arrived there with a bottle of acid and threw acid on them. The women, who suffered acid burns raised an alarm. Responding to their cries, husband of ‘S’, Mumtaz and his brother Ijaz rushed to the scene to rescue them. The suspect who was armed with a repeater gun, also threw acid on Ijaz.

In the ensuing scuffle, some of the acid also spilled on the hands and arms of the suspect who manged to flee the scene.

Ijaz and Safia, who suffered acid burns, were shifted to the Haroonabad Tehsil Headquarters Hospital for treatment.

District Police Officer Muhammad Anwar Khaitran told Dawn that on receiving the information about the incident, he immediately constituted a special police team under Faqirwali SHO Rao Inam that arrested the suspect. He said the victims would be provided protection by police and action would be taken against the suspect as per the law.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2019