hugs her mother at her home in Dhaka
At first glance, Bably Akter looks like any other nine-year-old Bangladeshi girl, dressed in a brightly coloured pink and turquoise skirt and top trimmed with silver sequins.
A matching headband conceals her left ear, badly deformed and the only obvious sign she is the victim of an acid attack, a practice rampant in the impoverished country, used mainly in domestic disputes and against women and children.
As her mother, Parul, recounts the story of how Bably’s father put drops of acid on different parts of her body for five days when she was a baby, the little girl lifts her skirt to reveal a large scar on her legs and feet.
“Her father wanted a son. He’d been violent towards me before Bably was born but it was not until day five, when he actually fed her acid I realised something was seriously wrong,” Parul, 26, said.
She complained to the police but charges were never laid.
“We ran away and spent two years at the Acid Survivors’ Foundation (ASF) hospital where Bably had a lot of plastic surgery on her mouth. She still needs more operations.” Read more ...
A matching headband conceals her left ear, badly deformed and the only obvious sign she is the victim of an acid attack, a practice rampant in the impoverished country, used mainly in domestic disputes and against women and children.
As her mother, Parul, recounts the story of how Bably’s father put drops of acid on different parts of her body for five days when she was a baby, the little girl lifts her skirt to reveal a large scar on her legs and feet.
“Her father wanted a son. He’d been violent towards me before Bably was born but it was not until day five, when he actually fed her acid I realised something was seriously wrong,” Parul, 26, said.
She complained to the police but charges were never laid.
“We ran away and spent two years at the Acid Survivors’ Foundation (ASF) hospital where Bably had a lot of plastic surgery on her mouth. She still needs more operations.” Read more ...
Source: Gulf Times
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