Police make arrest in rare case of teacher throwing acid on female student in Karachi

KARACHI: Police in southern Pakistani city of Karachi have arrested a teacher for attacking his female student and two of her relatives with acid, an official said on Sunday.
The horrifying incident occurred when the student, who had just completed a certificate course at the Sahil IT Institute in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area, this week showed up along her two uncles to collect her certificate which the teacher had refused to hand over after a heated exchange of words between the two a day earlier.
“When she arrived with her two uncles on Friday, the teacher, identified as Iftikhar, attacked them with acid, causing burns to all three of them” Qurban Ali, in-charge of the Aziz Bhatti police station, told Arab News.
The victims were taken to hospital and the police later arrested the suspect, according to the official.
“Investigation is underway but it has been established that the teacher had planned the attack as he had already arranged acid with the intention to harm the girl,” Ali said, adding the police were ascertaining the motive.
Dr. Summayia Syed, the Karachi police surgeon, said the student had sustained 13.5 percent burns while her uncles, Faizan Rasheed and Nauman Rasheed, sustained 14 and 9 percent respectively.
There had been a significant decrease in acid attacks in Pakistan since the enactment of a legislation criminalizing acid and burn violence in December 2011, according to a 2017 report by the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) rights group.
Between 2007 and 2016, there were 1,108 reported acid attacks in Pakistan, affecting 1,375 individuals. The severity of the issue was underscored by a surge in reported cases between 1999 and 2005, which peaked in 2002 (494 cases) and 2003 (417 cases), according to the report.
However, there has been a noticeable decline in such cases in recent years. In 2014, there were 153 acid attacks targeting 210 victims, followed by 69 in 2015 and 73 in 2016. The trend continued in 2017 with a further drop in the number of incidents to 39.
Despite the decline, acid attacks persist as a tool of violence against women and young children in Pakistan.
On Jan. 9, a 22-year-old woman schoolteacher was injured in an acid attack in the eastern city of Lahore after refusing a marriage proposal.