ISLAMABAD: Naziran Bibi knows exactly what she would consider apt justice for the person who hurled acid in her face, burnt out her eyes, disfigured her beyond recognition and destroyed her life.An eye for an eye, she tells media, her rage palatable in her small rooms at a charity's office in Pakistan's capital, her children scrambling over her as she gropes for a sewing box and twists thread round her fingers.
"If someone burns a face with acid, his face should also be burnt with acid. If someone blinds someone's eyes, his eyes should also be blinded," says Bibi.
"Yes, I want it done... my life is over now."
Bibi is locked in a complicated legal tussle over the attack and is fighting for custody of her young children, while learning how to live without sight and struggling with surgeries to rebuild her ruined face.
She is only 23 years old, but with no upper lip, a barely reconstructed nose, scar tissue where her right eye should be and a raw red socket where her left eye once was, her youth is impossible to discern.
Married off against her will as a second wife to her brother-in-law after her husband died, Bibi says she was treated abysmally. Then one night last year, someone poured acid over her as she slept, causing horrendous burns.
Confused, in pain and fearing for the safety of her two daughters, she was coerced by her husband into blaming a man she believes was innocent, and is now trying to retract her initial statement.
Bibi thinks her husband was responsible, but he remains free.
"I was in a terrible condition. I had psychological problems. I was not normal mentally... I simply want punishment for him. I want to throw acid on him. Not only on him, but on everybody who throws acid on others," she said.
The uneducated woman from Pakistan's cotton belt in rural Punjab province may want brutal justice, but activists are pressing for a change in the law to help prevent such attacks.
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