The technique of torture

It seems that it has become a trend. I baulk as I just wrote “trend’’, and so wait for the ink to dry before moving on. Trend to hurl acid on the face of a woman, a girl, who perhaps, has not responded to the displays of affection or advances, overtures of the man, boy who then thinks the only answer to being spurned is buy acid by the gallons and seek “revenge’’.

- RENÉE RANCHAN

No other way of teaching the object of his desire the lesson of her life! Maiming her forever by putting her through ear-shattering pain. Afterall, how could a male take rejection lying down, without taking any concrete action?! If the reason of scalding her to the very bone, blinding those eyes that would make him go rhapsodic, was not about being unrecognized, undiscovered, but a case of having “loved and lost’’ or being “brushed off ’’ since the lady-love found you not to be the right person or was being stifled by you or whatever be the reason, decided to call it quits, then being frozen-out comes with serious repercussions. A bucket full of sulphuric acid to be flung on the love-interest’s face to teach her the by-product, the ramifications of cold-shouldering a man of his “stature’’, of slighting him.

The most recent case of mutilating a girl by throwing acid on her face, occurred in Delhi on the 14th of this month, Wednesday it was I think. The 17-year old, 12th grader had left her house to go to school when two masked young men, zoomed by on their motorcycles, with the expressly-planned purpose of tossing acid on her. Three boys were involved in this operation. One of the boys on the bike had been friends with the girl---their friendship had fizzled out in September, so this “course’’ of action. The third person in this gory story, Virender was zipping around on a Scooty with “thwarted’’ Sachin’s mobile in hand, downloading his live location, so as to create an iron-clad alibi for the cops.