Bengaluru: Even 12 years after she survived an acid attack by a jilted lover during a train journey to Delhi from her hometown Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh in April 2006, Pragya Singh remains a beacon of hope for scores of such burn victims.
The 35-year-old gritty Pragya has helped about 200 women victims of acid attacks undergo 300 surgeries for free and gave them not just legal and financial aid but also a job to rebuild their lives. “The horrific incident happened 12 days after my marriage when I was 23. A vindictive ex-lover threw acid on my face and body while I was asleep in the train. I was in intensive care for several weeks and had 15 surgeries over two years to open my nasal cavity and mouth which got burnt,” recalled Pragya to IANS.
Living in Bengaluru since 2007 with her husband and later giving birth to two young daughters, Pragya set up Atijeevan Foundation in 2013 to make lives of other burn victims better and happier. Though the traumatic incident made Pragya hope for cosmetic surgeries to erase the burns and make her face look as it was before the gruesome attack, she learned to accept her appearance to march ahead in life.
Determined to get back on her feet, Pragya put an end to the reconstruction surgeries once her vital organs became functional.
“Instead of being a victim, I decided to be the change for other women who are hapless victims of such a heinous crime. I have been fortunate to have a supportive family financially and emotionally during the treatment and recovery phase,” noted Pragya.
Her foundation provides acid burn survivors a holistic support system and has tied up with over 15 private hospitals across the country to provide quality medical care to acid burn patients. The NGO, which functions on private donations, also bears the surgery cost for women victims who cannot afford it.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, there were 200 cases of acid attacks on women in 2016 alone, although NGOs estimate the number of such attacks to be about 500-1,000 across the country.
With the help of volunteers, the foundation also hosts camps and workshops for the burn survivors across cities and towns in the country, offering free legal assistance, medical treatment and counselling.
Following the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling directing states to consider acid attack victims as disabled for jobs, India Inc, which was hesitant to hire burn patients, have been open to include them in their workforce, as part of their quota to include the disabled in their companies.
Even as she admits that ban on sale of acid in the market was not feasible, as it is used for industrial products and sanitation, she wants states to regulate its supply in a diluted form across the country. (IANS)
