Dec 12, 2019, 6:23 PM IST
In 2006, barely 12 days after her wedding, Pragya Singh was travelling alone in a train from her hometown Varanasi to Delhi. In the wee hours of the night, while she was sound asleep, a man whose marriage proposal she turned down threw acid on her face. The horrifying incident left her face scarred for life, but her spirit rose from the ashes like a phoenix. Like Pragya Singh, there are several other acid attack survivors in India, who did not let their ordeal define the course of their lives. The upcoming Deepika Padukone starrer movie Chhapaak, which narrates the heartbreaking story of an acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, has brought focus back on this new face of gender-based violence in India.