A man has been accused of pouring acid on his sleeping wife. He is said to have been angry at his wife for giving birth to a baby girl recently, and not a boy, as he had wanted. The attack took place in a town called Moradabad, 165 km east of India’s capital city, New Delhi.
The man accused of the acid attack, a 32-year-old named Siraj (also known as Bhura), is currently at large, and is the subject of a police manhunt. He had been harassing his wife, 25-year-old Farah, for giving birth to a girl, and failing to give him a son. He had also accused her of failing to fulfill the dowry demands of their marriage. Following the attack, he is now wanted by police for “ voluntarily causing grievous bodily harm using acid “, Daily Mail reports.
The victim, Farah, was immediately rushed to the district hospital where she was treated for burns to her face, hands, and abdomen. She is currently undergoing recovery at the hospital.
According to Farah’s sister, Nusrat Jahan, Farah had married Siraj, a contractor, eight years ago. The couple had been fighting for almost a year, ever since Siraj started demanding a dowry from Farah’s family. And the trigger for the acid attack was the fact that Farah had given birth to the couple’s second daughter recently, much to the disapproval of Siraj who had wanted a son.
Indian man ‘pours ACID on his sleeping wife’ because she gave birth to two daughters and he wanted a boy https://t.co/qHdzmtBEU7
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 9, 2018
Farah described in detail what led to the horrific incident. She told the media that her in-laws had been giving her a hard time ever since the birth of her first daughter. This escalated, and they started to beat her. According to Farah, her husband’s family were treating her as if she had deliberately given birth to a daughter.
“After the birth of the first girl, my in-laws started to target me as if I deliberately delivered a baby girl.
“The harassment kept intensifying as time passed by. For the past one year, things had become really bad.”
Farah says that Siraj, under pressure from his family, later started demanding her to go and ask her parents for dowry money, almost eight years after their marriage. And he would beat her every time she refused. She says that she had gotten used to her “daily dose of torture,” and had been contemplating leaving him, but then the horrific incident took place.
“When I didn’t oblige them, they started to beat me up. It come to a head when my second daughter was born. I was trying to live with the daily dose of torture thinking about the well-being of my daughters. I was wondering if I part ways from Siraj who would provide for my two daughters and myself.”
Farah says that she hadn’t anticipated the extent to which Siraj would take his abuse. She says she will never forgive him for pouring acid on her.
“I won’t forgive him for this ever.”