Acid Attacks: A Brutal Crime of Passion

Sept. 3, 2003 -- On a scorching summer afternoon in May 1998, little Monira Begum was playing outdoors in a teeming Bangladeshi slum, when the doe-eyed 9-year-old was summoned to fetch a glass of water.

Tearing herself away from her friends, Monira dutifully complied, only to be subjected to a viciously sadistic attack that plunged her into a nightmare of pain and despair, robbed her of much of her childhood, and left its ugly imprint on her body and soul for life.

Reaching into the pocket of his kurta, or loose-fitting shirt, the man for whom she was fetching the water extricated a small bottle of corrosive acid, hurled it on the unsuspecting girl and attempted to flee as the caustic liquid started to eat into her flesh.

In the pandemonium of the next few moments, as the little girl screeched and her parents yelled for help and neighbors nabbed the attacker, the acid proceeded to devour Monira's left ear and eye, fuse one side of her mouth, scorch skin tissue and nerve cells on her face, neck and chest, and left her horribly maimed for life.

Five years after that attack in the industrial town of Tongi, about 20 miles north of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, Monira finally received justice earlier this year.

In a landmark ruling, a court in the Bangladeshi town of Gazipur sentenced her attacker, Swapan Gazi, to death by hanging under tough new laws aimed at curbing a recent rise in acid attacks on women.

"I am very happy with the verdict," Monira says during a phone interview with ABCNEWS.com from Dhaka. "People who do such things must be punished."

Jilted Lovers, Spurned Spouses

It's hard to comprehend the level of brutality and sadism that could lead people to do such things, but experts working with acid attack victims say the common reasons include spurned sexual advances, rejected marriage proposals, inadequate dowries as well as land or family disputes.

In Monira's case, her attacker was the man her impoverished parents had married her off to at the age of 8 on condition that she live with her parents until she turned 16.

Child marriage — or the marriage of girls under 18 and men under 21 — is illegal in Bangladesh, but is commonly practiced in rural and poor urban communities, where parents often lie about their daughters' ages or birth certificates simply don't exist.

Under entrenched, culturally sanctioned customs, informal marriage agreements often stipulate that the couple will not start conjugal life until the girl comes of age.

But Gazi wanted to take Monira home soon after the wedding, a move her father, a rickshaw puller, firmly opposed.

Trouble was brewing, the family knew, but little did they know that Gazi would resort to such a crime, the likes of which, activists say, have been increasing alarmingly in recent years.