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Nawda (Murshidabad): “If they had not melted me with acid, maybe my daughter would still be alive,” says Moyna Pramanik, her voice flat with grief, “I would have educated her and married her off, but I, too, had been destroyed by acid. Still, all the blame for how I look fell on me. Now I struggle to see with one eye, and I have lost an ear.”

For Moyna, acid attack did not end with the fire on her skin. It kept burning through her life, her body, dignity, family and, she says, even her daughter’s future. In West Bengal, where acid attacks scar women with alarming frequency, Moyna’s story lays bare the brutal truth of this crime. It is not only meant to injure, but to punish, isolate and destroy a woman in slow motion.

Married as a teenager in Nawda, Murshidabad, to a small businessman from Bangdubi village, Moyna says she discovered soon after that her husband had been married before. She tried to adjust. Soon, however, the marriage turned into a site of relentless abuse. Her husband, mother-in-law and sister-in-law allegedly began demanding money and gold as dowry. When those demands were not met, the violence they inflicted on her intensified.

“My father is a small farmer. How could he meet thwie demands?” Moyna says. “The torture became a daily affair. After my daughter was born, it became worse.”

In 2001, while she was cooking, her husband and in-laws allegedly assaulted her and threw acid on her face. Neighbours arrived on hearing her screams and rushed her to a hospital. She was later treated in Kolkata. She has survived, but at a heavy cost. She lost an ear, part of her vision, and the face with which she had once moved through the world.

“When I came home, people ran away seeing me. They called me a ghost,” Moyna says. “Even I was frightened to look at myself in the mirror.”

With support from the Acid Survivors and Women Welfare Foundation and a government school job as a midday meal........

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