A GANG of unidentified men threw acid on a 35-year-old gang-rape victim while she was staying at a government-run women’s hostel.

Guards came to her rescue, but the attackers fled the hostel in Lucknow, 330 miles southeast of Delhi. The assault in early July is the latest in a series of attacks on the victim, known only as Vimla, that included two men forcing her to drink acid in March.  India has made international headlines for horrific rape cases in recent years – but acid attacks are common, too, although they receive less attention.

There are 250 to 300 acid attacks reported in India every year, despite laws restricting its sale and that of other deadly chemicals, according to Stop Acid Attacks, a non-profit group.

Vimla “is a mysterious but tragic case of a woman being attacked repeatedly,” said Asish Shukla of Stop Acid Attacks, which also runs a chain of cafes called “Sheroes Hangout Cafe,” managed by survivors such as Vimla.

Shukla said the group has demanded that India’s Central Bureau of Investigation examine her case.  “We are worried why she is attacked again and again over a long period,” Shukla said.

Dibyaloke Rai Chaudhuri, a coordinator at Acid Survivor Foundation India, said Vimla’s attackers targeted her repeatedly so she would be frightened into withdrawing the charges against them. So far, she has not.

In 2016, India recorded 300 attacks but many go unreported, so the actual number could exceed 1,000, according to Acid Survivors’ Trust International based in the United Kingdom.

Other crimes against women in India are on the rise. Rapes in the capital region increased 277 per cent, from 572 in 2011 to 2,155 in 2016, according to Delhi police Laws against rape were made stricter after a notorious 2012 Delhi outrage in which five men and a juvenile brutalised a 23-year-old woman on a bus. She was dumped on a road and died two weeks later, sparking national outrage and protests.

Since 2013, acid attacks are an offence, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Prior to that, no law dealt specifically with acid attacks.

Acid attacks have also increased in the UK in recent years and police say that corrosive substances are being used against women and also increasingly by gangland figures against rivals.  “Acid is still sold openly in some parts of India, and it is easily available to the offenders. We have gathered videos of the acid being sold even after the restrictions, but it evoked no action,” said Laxmi Agarwal, a victim who is now one of the most recognisable people in India fighting the assaults.

Agarwal was attacked in April 2005 at age 16 by someone who stalked her for months, demanding that she marry him.

“I remember the day in New Delhi near Khan Market when this guy and his brother’s girlfriend together attacked me in the heart of the city. I lay writhing in pain and was hit by vehicles as I was blinded for a while,” said Agarwal, who is married to social activist Alok Dixit, the founder of Stop Acid Attack.

“I looked at my face months after the attack in a mirror and shuddered.

“I wanted to be a singer and had been taking lessons to be able to participate in a reality show without the knowledge of my parents,” Laxmi said.

“Those days I felt all my dreams had ended. But I think the attacker was defeated as he failed to crush my dream,” she added. Laxmi, now a mother of a two-year-old girl and a TED Talk speaker, said more victims are filing police complaints than in the past.

“Acid attacks destroy a family completely, and the victim has to undergo at least 80 reconstruction operations. It is harrowing,” she said.

Laxmi, who became a face of Viva N Diva, a clothing brand that wanted to send a social message by signing her for modelling, said rehabilitation of victims is most important since the attacker’s aim is to kill a woman’s aspiration to live a life of her choice.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act was revised in 2016 to include acid attack survivors as physically disabled. That provides access to education and employment, with three per cent of government jobs reserved for acid attack victims.

Activists and victims say the attacks will continue if the country does not treat the attackers more harshly and the victims more generously.

“The law only recognises those victims who have been blinded by the acid attacks. Many victims have other kind of disfigurement. Nothing is classified separately in the new law,” said Chaudhuri from the Acid Survivor Foundation.

“Conviction rates are very low in India, and so it does not act as a deterrent. The attackers also get bail easily,” he said.

According to Laxmi, the crux of the problem in India “is the way the boys are raised.  “They are taught from the childhood that they are superior to women.

“It is a patriarchy mindset that is leading to such crimes,” she said. “Even now the society here thinks a girl’s dream is not a dream.”