Acid attack: 3 complaints against ‘stalker’ in a year

GHAZIABAD: Three women on the rear seat of a shared auto suddenly felt a splash of liquid on their faces on Tuesday morning. Immediately, their skin began to burn and the liquid left deep blisters as it trickled down their bodies. Their shrieks jolted rush-hour traffic to a halt.The three were victims of an acid attack on the busy GT Road in Ghaziabad at 9am. The prime suspect is a 27-year-old woman, who is believed to have once been a "close friend" of one of the women in the auto and had allegedly been stalking her when the two fell apart.Police said two men were hired for the job. They came on a Pulsar bike, pulled level with the auto near the Mohan Nagar Metro station, emptied the bottle, and sped away.Their target was a 23-yearold insurance executive seated on the right. It appears the bikers had been tracking her before they made their move. Police believe the two others — Ansu, a 20-year-old woman seated in the middle, and Kamla, 45, seated to her left — were collateral damage. Anil Tyagi, 40, another passenger seated next to the driver, also sustained burns.The insurance executive, who operated from a Punjab National Bank branch with which her company has a tie-up, has been admitted to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. Doctors at Narendra Mohan Hospital, which initially treated her, said she had 25% burns on her face and upper body.The victims were taken to hospital by passers-by and local residents.Police said, over the past year, the insurance executive’s family had filed three complaints against the 27-yearold woman, who is lives in Delhi’s Kondli area. The two were colleagues for a year at a private firm in Noida, and were believed to be spending a lot of time together, which did not please the younger woman’s family. Under pressure, she quit that job and started working with the insurance company at the PNB branch.But the woman from Kondli allegedly followed her around and was spotted in the neighbourhood by her family on multiple occasions.“The Kondli woman and the victim had been spending a lot of time together and talked for hours on the phone during the one year when they worked together in Noida. This had miffed the family members of the injured woman. The Kondli woman had been following and harassing her for the past few months after she began keeping a distance from her,” Sahibabad police station SHO Rakesh Singh said.“The injured woman’s family had lodged a police complaint against the Kondli woman in the Sector 24 police station in Noida and later in Ashok Nagar police station in Delhi. Around five months ago, they again lodged a complaint at Shani Chowk police outpost in Sahibabad,” Singh said.An FIR was filed under Section 326A (acid attack) at Sahibabad against the woman from Kondli.Ansu, a student at New Era School of Ambedkar Nagar, sustained 15% burns. “I had boarded the auto at Mohan Nagar to go to my school for an exam. The woman who was targeted was to my right. The attack was so sudden that we failed to realise what happened. In the melee, I could just see the two men fleeing on a motorcycle after throwing acid on us,” she told TOI.Dr Divya Prakash, who treated the victims at the emergency unit of Narendra Mohan hospital, said, “The woman who had been targeted sustained around 25% burns on her face and upper body. There were chances of infection, so we referred her to a higher centre for treatment when her condition deteriorated. Ansu is likely to be referred to a higher centre too. The two other patients have been kept under observation.” The insurance executive’s brother told TOI that she was being treated in the ICU of Safdarjang Hospital. “Doctors are yet to give us the exact status of her condition. She has been kept in the ICU under observation,” he said.