014_Geeta: in 2000 a customer of her shop proposed (although Geeta was already married to another man). When she refused, she was scarred as punishment. Despite the complaint, the police did not record the case, probably behind a large payment, and the aggressor changed cities, continuing to live free. Thanks to the Acid Survivors Foundation, Geeta has found work in a luxury hotel where she takes care of flower arrangements in the rooms.

013_ Chandrahass Mishra: he was attacked by his landlord’s son in Meerut in July 2011 after he objected to lewd comments that the man was passing against women. “He was standing outside my gate, passing vulgar remarks against women who were passing by. I asked him to either stop or else move away,” says Mishra. Mishra complained to the father and this seems to have enraged the son even further. On 7 July 2011, a day after the incident, Mishra closed his iron warehouse and got on his scooter to return home. That was when he saw the landlord’s son approach him with a bucket in his hand. When the son threw its contents on him, Mishra says, he thought it was water. It was hydrochloric acid. “I put my hands on my head and saw that all my hair had come off”.

012_Ritu: assaulted in 2014 by two motorcyclists hired by her cousin who had previously been rejected. The aggressors, thanks to the new laws, have been punished with life imprisonment.

011_Mamta was asleep when her husband decided to pour acid on her. He was angry at the size of the wedding dowry her family provided. Mamta said when she woke up she wasn’t sure what was happening. When she got to the hospital she told the doctor to kill her. Her husband ran off with her six-month-old baby boy and has yet to receive any jail time.

010_Mohammad: when he was 5 years old he was shot while sleeping. He never found out who the attacker and the trigger was, probably someone who had a beef with Mohammad’s father. Now he is married, has two children and works in his workshop where he makes plastic parts for cars.

009_Roopa: in 2008 the stepmother tried to kill her by using a bucket full of nitric acid, easy to buy for its wide use in the jewelry and crafts industry. The main reason for the gesture was the fear that Roopa would reveal to his father the constant betrayals of his new wife. Immediately after the attack, despite Roopa’s desperate screams, no one intervened to help her for over two and a half hours. Over twenty percent of the body has suffered deep burns and fourteen surgeries have been performed so far. Roopa’s life has been turned upside down: her physical condition and new appearance have led her to attempt suicide several times. She was held for six years in a psychiatric facility, but it was only after meeting with the staff of the Sheroes Hangout Café in Agra, and her new job as a waitress, that she managed to find some serenity. The assailant was punished with a year and a half in prison, but as soon as released he tried again to kill Roopa attacking her with a knife.

008_Geeta, mother of Neetu and she also victim of her husband.

007_In 1992, when she was slashed with acid, Neetu was only 3 years old. Her mother Geeta and her younger sister, 18 months old, were also shot and died of severe head trauma. The aggressor was the father-husband, with problems of alcoholism, pushed by his brother and other relatives for economic reasons: they wanted the land owned by Geeta’s mother. Immediately after the attack he was reported, but his wife later withdrew the charge for not having problems with family and neighbors. To take the photographs in their home, I had to wait for her husband to be away for safety reasons. Now both Geeta and Neetu work as waitresses at the Sheroes Hangout Cafe in Agra.

006_Rupali: actress and visual artist from the city of Ghazipur, was disfigured in 2015 by a colleague who demanded sexual performance. Today Rupali, after numerous surgeries, found work as a waitress at the Sheroes Café in Lucknow.

005_ Kunti:, married when she was sixteen. Soon after she found out that her husband was an alcoholic and that he was dating another woman. To Kunti’s requests to stop, her husband has always reacted with violence until, in 2011, the use of acid. The assailant did a year and a half in prison.

004_Bala: she was attacked when she was 17 by the landowner, with whom her parents worked, who had fallen in love with Bala’s mother. When he heard that Bala’s family wanted to leave work and move elsewhere, he took revenge.

003_Khushboo: she discovered that his father was involved in a trafficking of girls sold for the prostitution market. After Khushboo filed a complaint, her father tried to threaten her to change her mind and retract the charges. The same day, he broke into her daughter’s house at night, pouring acid on her. Khushboo underwent several reconstruction interventions, while his father was sentenced to two years in prison. Today Khushboo lives in a sheltered house offered by the Sheroes.

002_Madhu: when she was 17 she was hit by a student from the same school who used to harass her at the end of classes. She was in the hospital for ten months. Married, she has three children, one of whom has autism. For years, Madhu couldn’t find work because of her scars. Thanks to Sheroes, she finally found her own space, her own purpose.

001_Rukaiya was attacked in 2002, when she was 14. The reason was the rejection of the marriage requests of the brother-in-law’s brother. The family members reported it to the police, but the brother-in-law pressured him to leave his wife, the sister of the victim, so that the charge against the brother could be dropped. Rukaiyya preferred to recant, but in the following months he attempted suicide five times. The aggressor lives free in Delhi.