Buying acid from a store in Kerala is surprisingly easy, considering the repeated incidents of men throwing acid on women, killing or grievously injuring them for life. All one needs to do is search for a chemical or lab supplies store and ask for a bottle of formic acid - the kind which has been most commonly used in attacks. TNM visited two stores in Thiruvananthapuram to find out how difficult it will be. We got it both times, a bottle of formic acid each, sold without many questions asked, and without even having to submit a proof of identity as the law demands.
Since January 2022, at least four cases of acid attacks on women have been reported in Kerala. In three of these cases, the attacker was the husband. Two of the women, aged 27 and 32, died from severe burns and injuries to their face and body. The two years after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that is 2021 and 2022, saw four to five cases each. In 2017, the state witnessed 13 cases, the highest among all south Indian states, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Eight cases each were reported in 2018 and 2019.
Yet, as TNM’s experiment in the capital city proved, procuring acid in Kerala is an all too easy task. “Attackers most likely get it from agencies supplying chemicals. It may not be from laboratories,” says Kerala’s chief chemical examiner Jayakumaran Nair R. He went on to say that formic acid, the most commonly bought in the state, is needed for rubber farmers. Vigilance Inspector General of Police (IG) Harshita Attaluri says that stopping acid attacks when acid is still widely used for legitimate purposes like farming can be difficult. “Acid is a regulated commodity, and one needs a licence from the local self-government to sell it. Shops should also maintain registers and keep the details of those who come to buy acid. It may mostly be for farming purposes. The question is, how do you stop the attacks when the acid, which might have been bought for farming, is misused for attacking people?” says Harshita.
One of the most recent acid attacks in Kerala was on January 16, when a man poured acid on his wife, 42-year-old Maya, at their home near Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam district. Sajeev, the 48-year-old husband, had allegedly used the formic acid he procured for rubber farming. He was later arrested and charged under section 326A of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. We learnt from police sources that Sajeev knew formic acid was used for rubber farming and could easily be obtained from a store. Maya, who suffered injuries on her neck and chest, is reportedly out of danger.
But that is not often the case. Fashana Sherin, only 27, succumbed to her injuries after her estranged husband Shanavas threw acid on her in November 2022, after he broke into her house in Malappuram in the middle of the night. In January 2022, 32-year-old Lijitha died in Wayanad after her husband Sanal threw acid on her while she was attending to her shop. Their 11-year-old daughter, who was with Lijitha at the time of the attack, was also injured. In another such case, a woman and her child were attacked with acid by a neighbour in Kattakada, in the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, in July 2022. According to police records, the attacker bought a bottle of formic acid from a store in Aryanad, under the pretext of using it for rubber farming.
Despite the high prevalence of acid attacks in India, the country did not have a specific law under which perpetrators of acid attacks could be punished, until 10 years ago. It was the relentless fight of Laxmi Agarwal, an acid attack survivor from New Delhi, that resulted in the Criminal Law Amendment Act—adding sections 326A and 326B against acid attacks and attempted attacks. The Supreme Court, in 2013, also ruled for a restriction on the sale of acids, requiring buyers to produce ID proof and state the purpose of buying the acid. Following the 2013 Supreme Court order to regulate the sale of acid, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs issued an advisory to the states to include acid in the list of poisons to be regulated under the Poison Act of 1919. (The Poison Act empowers state governments to regulate the possession of any ‘poison’ that could be used to commit murder.) But activists like Laxmi say that the law has done little in limiting the sale of acid.
Laxmi Agarwal / Facebook
Though the Ministry of Home Affairs issued an advisory to all states on how to regulate acid sales, there seems to be little clarity on the ground about which department in Kerala is responsible for checking that the procedures are followed (such as if the shop selling acid is maintaining a register of buyers, their photo ID proofs and so on). It is not the Excise Department, as it is in some other states.
According to Jayakumaran, “The acids commonly used in Kerala are formic acid, sulphuric acid, and hydrochloric acid.” It is mostly formic acid, or others such as hydrochloric acid and sulphuric acid, that you can procure from a school or laboratory, that are used for the attacks in Kerala, a police source tells us. Ashish Shukla, co-founder of Sheroes Hangout Café, a community for acid attack survivors, recounts that many activists have been calling for a ban of acid sale in the retail market for years.
Men often turn to acid attacks when relationship issues, rejections, or suspicion of cheating arise. Most attacks seem planned, as procuring the acid takes some time. Psychiatrist Dr Arun B Nair calls acid attacks the manifestation of love turning toxic. “It is a mental state of seeing your partner as your possession. When the partner expresses an opinion of their own or has a difference of opinion or chooses to exit the relationship, that is when these cruel ideas form in the person’s mind. They would want to kill the partner or disfigure them badly, with the idea that no one else should be able to love them again,” he says.
The 2019 film Uyare had captured one such undemocratic relationship that ended in an acid attack. Uyare told the story of an acid attack survivor, played by Parvathy Thiruvothu. In an interview given to TNM at the time, Parvathy had spoken about the issue of easy availability of acid. “Why do we still have acid that can be bought over the counter?” she had then asked. TNM spoke to the film’s director Manu Ashokan about acid attacks in Kerala. “There weren’t many acid attacks in Kerala at the time our film was conceptualised. So for our research, we spoke to survivors at Sheroes in Delhi. What we understood from them is that acid did not come just from the chemistry labs like we’d thought. For instance, there is battery acid (sulphuric acid) used in car batteries,” he says.
This is why a mere stop in the sale of acids won’t be a solution against acid attacks. “To stop the attacks, you need to go further than curtail acid sales,” says IG Harshita. Instead, focus must be on the question of socialisation, on how children are brought up. “All the attention of parents is on raising girls—on what they wear, when they come back home, or who they talk to. These questions are not asked of boys. No one tells boys that they should respect women. Tomorrow, these boys will grow into someone’s husband, friend, or colleague. Sensitisation should begin while bringing up children,” she states.