- Spurned lover targets girl after V-Day snub, flees on motorbike
RASHEED KIDWAI
From The Telegraph
Shivpuri, Feb. 20: A 17-year-old college girl returning home from science tuition with two friends was splashed with acid by a youth whose overtures she had spurned on Valentine’s Day.
Raj, 22, accosted Nidhi and her friends Jyoti and Puja at a roundabout in the heart of Shivpuri town on Wednesday and threw sulphuric acid, leaving her with severe burns.
Shivpuri superintendent of police Sanjay Singh said Raj was yet to be nabbed as he had fled the scene of the crime on a motorcycle. Raj reportedly has the reputation of a bully.
In Shivpuri district hospital, Nidhi’s father Raju Soni, who runs a toy shop, was heard shouting that he would raise as much money as was required to remove the ugly scars on his daughter’s face.
Nidhi, writhing in pain, apparently kept asking him and other relatives whether her face had been disfigured, sources said. Doctors have told her father she would require elaborate cosmetic surgery, preferably in Mumbai, to get back her earlier look.
On Valentine’s Day, Raj had reportedly proposed to Nidhi, but she had rebuffed him saying that as a student of Class XI, her priority was getting admission in a medical college.
Nidhi has become the latest victim of the continuing trend of acid attacks in the country.
According to a petition in the Supreme Court in December 2008, as many as 484 such incidents were reported in 2002, 410 the next year and since then the number has been on the rise.
The National Women’s Commission and the Law Commission have recommended tougher laws to curb acid attacks. A draft bill by the women’s panel has suggested a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for throwing acid and causing deformity or disability.
The Prevention of Offences (By Acids) Bill, 2008, has also proposed that the Centre should constitute a National Acid Attack Victims’ Assistance Board and form monitoring authorities in states to help victims get quick medical treatment and counselling.
Any victim — in case of death, a legal heir — would have to approach the board. The board would prima facie study the application and, if satisfied, release an interim amount of Rs 5 lakh to the victim from a fund within 30 days of appeal. The board can release up to another Rs 35 lakh to a victim for medical and legal expenses against bills produced.
The bill, however, is stuck in a bureaucratic tangle and is not likely to see the light of day soon.
The Law Commission has suggested a minimum 10-year jail term and a maximum of life imprisonment.
In December 2008, a Supreme Court bench had scrapped a Bombay High Court judgment that reduced Mallappa Sangramappa Mallipatil’s sentence to a mere 35 days from the three-year imprisonment ordered by the trial court.
The apex court took exception to the high court ruling that showed leniency to an acid attack accused.
The above is one of the fall-outs of "Valentine's Day"
When a crow tries to walk like a swan, it remains neither a crow now a swan.
Our boys are trying to ape the west and just imbibing their bad habits.
The west celebrates "Father's Day", "Mother's Day" once a year.
On these days they send cards and maybe a present and wish their parents Happy Father's Day or Happy Mother's Day.
For the rest of the year, they forget that their parents even exist.
Same with Valentine's Day.
They express their love even before marriage which lasts maybe a year or two.
Just a few days ago, we read a piece in the papers of a 13 year old becoming a father. The mother is only 15 year old.
Valentine's Day and all other such days are just an advertisement stratategy adopted by the western culture to make you spend money on cards, presents etc.
The result is what we are now seeing in the USA with banks failing one by one and people losing their houses, cars and jobs and having to cut their food budgets.
Our culture does not favour this.
Live within your means, in harmony with your surroundings.
