The child doesn’t recognise his tormentors, which means they could get away with the heinous crime. His mother says the boy has been in a shock since then, and isn’t talking much to anyone in the family.

His parents too took him to a private doctor in the area. “It was too risky for us to go to a hospital,” his father says.

A lesser-talked about but an extremely worrying feature of the recent communal riots in New Delhi is the use of acid, or “acid-like substance” as survivors have stated.

The victims include an eight-year-old girl, who was returning with her mother to Gokulpuri after attending a wedding in Shiv Vihar. The girl’s mother told India Today that an “acid-like substance” was thrown at the child.

The publication quoted the girl as saying, “I saw men with rods and swords in the streets. Danga ho raha tha [it was a riot out there]. We were walking and suddenly someone threw liquid at me. I screamed to my mother as my skin started to burn and dissolve, we ran from there immediately. I am scared now. I don't feel like eating anything.”

Swarajya’s ground visits and reports by other publications suggest that most cases of acid attacks in riots occurred in Shiv Vihar area.



Yet another victim of acid attack in the riots, 54-year-old Mohammad Waqil, is also a resident of Shiv Vihar, as reported by The National.

It is in the same area that a crew of Republic TV found an “acid factory” operating adjoining a school.



In its report, the news channel showed multiple tanks which were filled with acid but marked as ‘gangajal’.



At its facade, the factory had a board saying ‘Deepak band’.



However, a man claiming to be a former worker at the unit told the channel that the factory was owned by one Feroze Khan. The worker said that the acid was supplied mainly to “Mohammedan areas” such as Mustafabad, Chand Bagh, Karawal Nagar and Yamuna Vihar.

Local residents told the channel that they believe that the acid in the unit might have been supplied to the rioters.

A report by Times Now says that the Delhi police have found in their investigation that rioters had hoarded commercial acid, which they used in violence.